


Rebel Rebel

by ConcernedThirdParty



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Heist, Not A Fix-It, POV First Person, Self-Insert, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:14:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22512313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConcernedThirdParty/pseuds/ConcernedThirdParty
Summary: A self-insert named Tommy Hurst wakes up in the Harry Potter world as a Ravenclaw at the start of Order of the Phoenix only to realise that something isn’t right about Harry himself. Believing he can get back to his world by finding proof, Tommy starts on a journey that could change the world.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30





	1. Leap of Faith

**0.**

IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY, I’d just turned sixteen years old, and like many teenagers, I was currently at a house party with a bunch of my closest mates. My friend’s parents had gone away for a weekend, and we were currently living it up like we only had one life – music was glaring in the background, way too loud, I knew it would wake the neighbours soon, and we were generally having a whale of a time. People were playing pool, drinking games, and generally trying to imitate the parties that you see in American movies and failing. I was hanging in the corner myself, talking to my best mate. “So, I was thinking, you know about the ending,” he said.

“Mate, we’re at a party, it’s our night off. Try to relax for a change. Not everything has to be about the film,” I said. “Just calm, ok?”

“I guess you’re right. You know I get a bit anxious about these things,” said my friend. His name was Leland, he was a towering, imposing figure, tall enough that had already drawn a few stares. His Dad was rich – not big money – but rich enough to give Leland whatever he wanted in life, and Leland had decided to become a filmmaker after watching a Tarantino movie one time despite the fact so that he was too young to watch it, so a filmmaker Leland was going to become. “It’s a big shoot. Hell, it’s not even a student film. We’re not even technically students yet. But I want to go big, you know. Like the ending of Inglorious Basterds. I’m thinking, we want a massive shootout. The bad guy, he’s going to find the good guy on the roof of the house. And they’re going to go head to head with other, it’s going to be bloody, but the good guy’s going to kill the bad guy and then find out that he’s not really…”

The music abruptly stopped, whatever was playing in the background died, and confusion began to set in. “Alright, the party’s over!” said a loud voice, and I realised it must have been Leland’s parents coming back home early from wherever they were going. Marching into the room like they owned the place, and they rightfully did. 

“But mum, you said…” Leland protested.

“Not on nights that I’m at home, and not as many kids as this. It’s like a playpen. Scram. Go on. Shoo, we don’t want you here.”

“What about Scott?”

“Scott has to go too,” said his mother, “Sorry, but I warned you. The consequences.”

Kids had already bolted as soon as Leland’s parents had arrived, hastily realising that they were no longer welcome.

“Sorry mate,” Leland said. “Look, I’ll see you tomorrow, right? Bright and early.”

“Yeah,” I said, making a beeline for the exit. It was dark something like 12pm, I’d be tired as hell tomorrow and we all would be, I saw the two lead actors snogging each other in the corner of the room, they were there too. Still, I made my way for the exit all the same, not risking to offend Scott’s parents, out, across the street in a hurry, knowing that all I had to do was make it three blocks back home to a small semi-detached building that was a lot less nicer than the one that I had just left, when –

I collided with something. A car? It felt painful enough to be a car. I didn’t see it, I was too wrapped up in my own thoughts, when I should have been concentrating on the road. All I felt was a sudden jolt of pain, sheer, chaotic pain that I’d never felt anything remotely like before, being a relatively sheltered child, and then… 

Nothing. Just nothing. Silence, and that was it. My consciousness faded into nothingness. 

**I.**

It’s not every day you dream about Hogwarts. I woke up in the Ravenclaw Common Room at 9:30 in the morning, at least according to the pestering and shoving of the students around me. “Tommy,” one of the students was saying, “Are you alright? I heard screaming last night.”

“Screaming? No… wait, where am I?”

“You’re in the Ravenclaw Common Room, Tommy. You’re late for your first class. Snape is going to be mad. You’ll get detention for sure. Look, I’ve already tried calling Professor Flitwick,” one of them was saying. Flitwick? Ravenclaw? The names struck me almost instantly, I was dreaming about Hogwarts. And Harry Potter. “Look. We don’t have much time. We could probably get you out on a technicality if you wanted to see Madam Pomfrey. Besides, Snape barely notices us ever since Potter, I don’t know what he did to earn his hatred but it must have been something bad.”

Yes. Definitely Harry Potter. I never remembered dreams being this… vivid before, though, or this many words. I decided to play along, because what’s the worst that could happen. “Oh yeah. Um, Crabbe hexed me last night.”

“Crabbe?” said the black-haired boy. “Oh no. I’m so sorry. Did it hurt?”

“Yeah,” I made up something that sounded like a wince. “Caught me by surprise, I think I’m still recovering. Must have blocked some of my memory, too.”

“That could be serious.”

“I’m sure it’s just a temporary fix. No need to worry Snape, I’ll grim and bear the detention,” I said, being sure that I’d probably be awake by then so wouldn’t have to suffer the consequences. “Hey, what year is it, by the way?”

“Crabbe must have really got you bad. It’s 1995.”

“1995? Oh wow. Okay. I need to sit down,” I said. I wasn’t even alive yet in this timeline, this was bad enough as it was. 

“What, were you expecting another year?”

“Yeah, let’s just say I had a really weird dream last night,” I said, realising that this was how I could get away with everything. “I dreamt I was in 2020.”

“2020, far out, man,” said the boy. “Well, you’re in 1995. Hate to break it to you, spaceman.”

“Okay… what’s my next lesson?”

“Defence Against the Dark Arts. And good luck with that, by the way. It’s Umbridge. In case you’ve forgotten.

“Oh,” I said, realising something. Oh no. Maybe being in the Harry Potter world wasn’t such a good idea after all. I remembered how terrifying Imelda Staunton was as the Professor, who I found in the films to be even scarier than Voldemort himself. 

“And you won’t want to miss that.”

“Thanks. Um, mate?”

“Yeah?”

“The hex is still taking a while to hit in. What’s your name?”

“Michael,” he said. “Michael Corner.”

**II.**

The first lesson of the day – that I was able to properly attend, was Defence Against the Dark Arts. Snape was undoubtedly mad that I missed his lesson but I could take comfort in the fact that he was likely too busy with Harry Potter – that was my get out clause, for most of the year, I guess. Or at least, most of the dream, which was starting to feel a little longer than the ones that I normally have. As I made my way through to Defence, I was starting to get the sinking feeling that this was in fact, more than it appeared. Michael Corner was definitely a character from the books, I remember him dating Ginny Weasley at some point before Harry – but I didn’t know too much about who he really was as a person. Jesus. There was a whole new world to explore – and who was to say I was really in the same world of the books? Fanfiction and all. Who’s to say I wasn’t in a crossover?

The tell-tale sign of dreaming is something that I learned fairly early on, and that writing and text is virtually non-existent in dreams and makes no sense, but every painting that I walked past had perfectly vivid descriptions of who the subject was. A few were looking at me wondering why I was staring at them, others revelled in the attention, but either way, I had to be ready for Defence, and Umbridge, so I mentally prepared myself for the questions that she’d throw at me. Wracking my brain, I was starting to find new knowledge that wasn’t there, a combination of many things. My brain hurt – a mixture of two memories fighting for space. I was Thomas Hurst, Ravenclaw, fifth year. Tommy to his mates, it seemed. And I was Scott Walker, Londoner, part-time founding member of the school’s one and only David Bowie cover band in the middle of my secondary school. I was fifteen years old in both universes, it seemed. 

I took a seat next to Michael at the back of the class. “In case your memory still hasn’t come back,” Michael was starting to treat it as a joke at this point and playing along regardless, “Be as discreet as possible. Umbridge doesn’t seem like the kindest of teachers.”

“Well duh,” I said, and curious about something, asked Michael, catching my first glimpse of Harry Potter in the process, the Boy Who Lived, as he entered the room like he owned the place, talking with Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, who resembled their movie actors almost uncannily. “Don’t suppose you know where I could get a radio? Like, a normal one.”

“The Weasley Twins have hotwired a normal muggle one to play muggle music. It was more of an experiment to see if they could or not but now most of the muggles want to listen the BBC,” Michael said. “Turns out not everyone likes being shut-off from the real world, you know?”

“I get that,” I said. “Cool. I’ll visit them after the class. Any idea where they are?”

“They’ll have Astronomy with the Hufflepuffs.”

“Cool,” I said.

I was waiting for something big to happen next as the lecture progressed, I knew the first lesson with Umbridge was where Harry would make his outburst, get sentenced to detention and find out about the painful method of teaching that Umbridge would use on his hand that he’d nurse for the whole year. But nothing happened, no grand speech, no grand showdown – Harry just sat silent and tried to blend in with the group as Umbridge rattled on her propaganda. Come on, Harry, I kept urging him all the while. Say something. Please. Anything. 

Not once did he shoot a look in my direction. Why should he? He sat there like he was calculating something somehow, like he knew more than he appeared. To the average student it would look like he was just trying to blend in, but even after the speech Umbridge made about Voldemort not existing, Voldemort not coming back, nothing came at all. It was a perfectly ordinary Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson, which by all means, shouldn’t be possible. “Something’s wrong,” I said, aloud, after the lesson, to Michael, when we filed out of the room. “Harry Potter. He was meant to have an outburst here. He was meant to say something about Voldemort.”

Michael flinched at the name. “You Know Who’s not back, Tommy. And why should Harry say something?”

“Because he always does.”

“Because he always does, you’ve got a point. I mean, when was the last first Defence lesson of the year that we had without some kind of drama? I mean, Year Four had the Imperius Curse and Moody, Jesus, he almost makes Umbridge look like a normal teacher in comparison, Year Three had Lupin, Year Two, Lockhart… It’s almost refreshing to get something like this for a change. Silence. Hey, look, we’ve got a break now. Want to go to the Astronomy tower? Maybe your it’ll clear your head.”

“Yeah, sure. Why not?” I said. “I’m still a bit dizzy. Fresh air could do me good.”

**III.**

The Weasley Twins were waiting underneath the Astronomy Tower, off to the right. Michael showed me a path to their secret storage of what they’d been hoarding to sell on, and it was like walking into a Charity Shop – all random assortments of ready-made prank items to ship off and sell. Financed in part by the winnings from the previous year, they’d already started a lucrative business of their own that they were looking to expand past Hogwarts in their final year. “And look what we have here, Fred!” George Weasley announced as we entered. “Ravenclaws. No, pranks are wasted on you - I didn’t think you lot had a sheer creative mind amongst you. What are you lot doing here?”

“Feeling a bit homesick, to be honest,” I said. 

“Do you want a magical orb? We’re working on a name, but we call it the “Home Away from Home”. Rated five out of five stars by its users, which admittedly, are both me and Fred so far” said Fred – even though I knew full well that he was Fred, they had tell-tale signs that I was picking up from the books, springing to action in salesman mode: “Three sickles, and you can see your house or any building that you know through the orb. Perfect recreation.”

“No, it’s not that,” I said. “ A radio would be great.”

“A radio? Muggle or Magical? For an extra five sickles, you can get on for both stations. Unlimited channels. We ugh, only have the BBC at the moment. For ten sickles, it’s yours.”

“Ten sickles?” I said, fumbling in my pocket, relieved to see that Tommy had been smart enough to leave some coins in his pocket last night. “Bargain. I’ll take it.”

“We might just have ourselves a loyal customer,” said George, glancing across to Fred. “Well done, George. Any time you want to come back, feel free to do so! We need the money.”

“Hold on, I want to test it first. I don’t want it to explode in my face or something like that…”

“Explode? What do you take us for?” George said. “Tricksters?”

“Pranksters?” Fred followed up. 

“Trickster-Pranksters?” George finished. “Go on, I’ll even try it for you.”

George turned a few dials, and familiar words filtered through the communications link. Words – not music. From my mother, panicking, in distress, “ _Wake up, Scott, come back to us, please. We need you. We’re right here, darling. We hope you’re okay…_ ”

I recoiled from the radio like I was struck by lightning. Jesus, what was going on? I had to be dreaming right. “Did you hear that?” I asked, when I could sense them looking at me in alarm. “Did you hear that?”

“Are you alright, kid?” Fred said, looking at me, concerned. 

“I mean, even if you don’t like him, there’s no way David Bowie’s that bad,” Michael said, a bit worried. “Should we get Madam Pomfrey?”

“That didn’t sound like David Bowie to me,” I said, as if on cue, the voice had gone, replaced by Cat People. “That sounded like… my mother.”

“Your mother?” Michael said. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

“No, I’m not sure. That was my mother. She said, Wake up. Wake up, come back to us, please. We need you. We need you, Michael. As though I’m not just dreaming. Maybe, I’m in some kind of coma.”

“Maybe you are,” Fred said, offhandedly. “Maybe you are, and you’ve got to do something drastic to wake up.”

“Drastic?” I asked Fred.

“Like, I don’t know. If you’re you and you really are dreaming, you’ll wake up. If this world is real then you’ll stay in this one. If not…”

“It’s a leap of faith,” said George, seriously.

“Maybe you’re right. Something drastic,” I said, looking around, realising where I was, realising what kind of something drastic meant when Fred was talking about it, realising that the only way back from a dream was to provide some kind of kick (I’d seen Inception, too), and wake up on the other side, maybe in some kind of hospital, maybe in my own bed, but out of here, out of a world where Harry Potter might not even be Harry Potter, and the safety of my own home where I was a normal kid doing normal things.

I was on the Astronomy Tower. As in: The Astronomy Tower. The first part didn’t matter, it could have been any kind of Tower. What mattered was the fact that it was a Tower, and Hogwarts School being Hogwarts, there were no barriers. All I had to do was take a leap of faith. 

No time like the present. I could see no other way out of this dream. I made a beeline for the stairs, ignoring the shocked cries of Michael, Fred and George, and did my best to run up as quickly as I could. “Wait, kid! Come back! We were only-” Fred shouted after me, worry in his voice, I didn’t catch his next words, I was too busy running – I wanted to wakeup, I wanted to wake-

“Tommy.”

A voice stopped me when I reached the top of the Astronomy Tower. There was enough gap in the normally-closed shutters and enough of a stormy weather so that Michael was having to yell to get my attention. “Tommy!”

I turned around. Michael was standing there. His hair blowing in the wind. The room itself was largely empty, the Astronomy Items stored underneath the floor, by the looks of things. I don’t know why the shutters, normally closed in the day, were left open.

“They were joking! It’s the Weasley Twins,” said Michael. “They didn’t think you were serious. What the hell, mate?”

“They were joking?”

“Yeah! They didn’t mean anything seriously,” said Michael. “Come down, come on, get down from there. It’s a long way. You’re worrying me. Please.”

“It’s a long way,” I echoed, realising how close to the edge I really was, backing away. “Alright. I’ll come down. I’ll come down. Don’t, don’t get Madam Pomfrey. I’m fine. Just a nightmare. The song, it reminded me of something.”

“What, Cat People? Sure it didn't remind you of David Bowie?”

I’d caught a bit of it after the voice had stopped, it had been playing as I’d run up the stairs. “Yeah. There’s a movie, I mean, my friend watched it. It plays at the end. There’s a game in the middle of it, where these characters are pretending to be somebody else. Like, the song doesn’t play until the end of the film, but it’s in the same film: they have to keep their identities as spies secret from the Nazis in a Basement Tavern. And then in that movie with Charlize Theron, it’s used again. The main character is a double agent, maybe a triple, I wasn’t really paying attention by the end.”

“So?” We were walking back down the stairs now.

“And in that German show about spies,” I added, careful only to make vague references that Michael was kind enough not to prod at. “Modern Love plays. But don’t you get my point. Bowie always plays in movies or shows when there’s spies or some kind of impostor.”

“Yes, but you’re missing a crucial point. The James Bond pictures kind of disapprove that theory. There’s no Bowie in any of them and they’ve made a lot…”

“Yeah, but…” I said, trying to think of a counterpoint to that, couldn’t find anything, so resorted to a simple comeback. “Since when did you watch James Bond? I’m just listing examples here, Michael. Roll with me.”

“I’m rolling with you.”

“So there’s a moment, right, in the film,” I wanted to avoid mentioning what name it was in case he went down looking for it and realised that it didn’t come out yet. “Where the Germans spot the British spy because he makes a simple hand gesture that the Germans don’t use, but the British do. The Germans notice it instantly and they realise he’s an impostor because they know something the British guy doesn’t, because they’ve lived in Germany all their lives and the impostor hasn’t.”

I hadn’t exactly lived in the Harry Potter universe all my life, but I’d lived and breathed it since I was a kid, I knew the books like the back of my hand, I knew when something was wrong, and although I loathed comparing a Potter situation to something out of a Tarantino movie, something that I’m not normally a fan of, I couldn’t think of a better example to illustrate my point: And I wanted to pull a Marty McFly moment on someone from the past if I was sticking around now. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying, is that I know this world. I know what works and what doesn’t,” I said, even though Michael wasn’t going to believe me I had to see if I could get the message across somehow, if I could even have somebody on my side, it would help. “And right now, Harry Potter just proved to me, in the space of one hour, by not responding to Umbridge, that he’s not Harry Potter. He may look like him. He may talk like him. He may be in Gryffindor like him. But it’s not him.”

“Come on, mate, that’s insane,” said Michael. “There’s no way…”

“The Boy Who Lived is an impostor,” I said, aloud, and not caring what Michael thought of my comment – I realised that if anything had a chance of getting me home, without killing myself, without taking the easy way out, I had to prove that Harry Potter was not Harry Potter. “And I’m going to prove to the world that he’s not who he says he is so I can get back home.”


	2. The Heist of Gryffindor Tower

I.  
I HAD A FEW goals now that I had accepted my place in the Wizarding World, and it turned out, becoming a Mary-Sue wasn’t quite as easy as going down to the Gringotts Bank and asking for an Inheritance Test. For one, it was forbidden to leave the school without valid emergencies, which that did not qualify as, for two, the Gringotts Bank was not where you went to have Inheritance Tests. Come on, a bank, really? 

I learnt that in the first lesson of History Classes, in the first five minutes of them before Professor Binns put me to sleep like he did everyone else, Goblins really hated humans, and tried to swindle as much gold off them as they possibly could. Remembering Goblins names was just a basic common courtesy. I couldn’t bet on sporting events to make cash either, my memory of most football games in the 1990s was hazy at best, I had to wait until the early 2000s for a potential exploit, especially considering I couldn’t bet until I was of age. And on top of that, I didn’t even know if everything in this world was still the same as the one I’d left behind, there were no wizards in a world where the Wizarding World franchise was still dominating the big screen.

So; I started small. I was going to rob Gryffindor Tower and find any kind of evidence in Harry Potter’s bedroom that would give me clues about his identity. It was an approach that I confided in Michael as we were walking across the grass at lunchtime. “He’s got to have some proof. Like a journal. Or something on him, I’ve read books, I know how this works, impostors always make mistakes, maybe a large amount of Polyjuice stashed under his bed-”

“But even so, and if what you’re saying is true, why impersonate Harry? Why not do anything drastic before now, and why something so simple as not talk back to Professor Umbridge?”

“Domino effects, mate,” I said. “It’s time travel basics. “Change one small thing in established events and let everything snowball out from there. This Harry might not be a time traveller but he knows that something’s going to happen before it does.”

“There’s a way to test that. Throw a rock at him when he’s not looking at him and see if he ducks.”

“No, it’s more complicated than that,” I said. “You seen Back to the Future?”

“The one with the car that goes back in time? Yeah. My Dad was a big fan. Oh. I get you. But it’s insane, how is it even possible? Time turners can’t go back more than a few hours at most, and you’d have to get access to the Ministry to be able to use those and why would the Ministry send an agent to control Hogwarts if they’d already controlled The Boy Who Lived?”

“What if it was Voldemort,” I realised something. It always was Voldemort, after all.

“You-Know-Who? No. He’s dead.”

“But what if he’s not,” I said. “I’m spit-balling here. What if Harry never came back from the Goblet of Fire. What if Voldemort Polyjuiced as Harry and came back to…”

“Do what?”

“Get back at Dumbledore? I don’t know. It doesn’t explain the lack of reaction. The knowledge. I mean, unless Voldemort just tried to-”

“Can we not, please.”

“Not what?”

“Say the name.”

“It’s just a name.”

“It’s more than that. The things that he did. People are still scared. He’s not just the Bogeyman – he’s the Bogeyman’s Bogeyman,” said Michael. “Most people still can’t sleep at night. They remember the war. My mum especially. She’s not the same person she was.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine.”

“It’s easy for you,” he said. “Muggleborn. Your parents never knew. My Dad was a muggle and he knew. He had to live in our attic half the time during the war. Imagine that. Living in the attic of your own home. Mum had to pretend he was dead to save him; the Death Eater attacks were so frequent. So that’s why we don’t say the name. It may be a different story for Dumbledore, but he’s Dumbledore. We’re not.”

“I’m sorry,” I said again. 

“It’s okay. You don’t know. I’m surprised you never brought it up beforehand.”

“Was I a good friend, beforehand?”

“Yes,” Michael said, slightly wierded out by the question. 

“I don’t want to lose that,” I said, not risking the possibility of jeopardising the only friendship that it seemed I had in the Potter world. “You Know Who from now on, okay?”

“Yeah.” Michael said, and then; “Now, how are we going to rob Gryffindor Tower?”

II.

As an apology for the radio joke going too far, Fred and George had given me it free of charge and told me about a spare classroom on the Fourth-Floor corridor that nobody uses, apparently because even Dumbledore forgot it existed, so that was where Michael and I began our plan. I’d utilised a chalkboard to draw up a plan with a map of what I roughly knew of Gryffindor Tower from gossip that I’d picked up on and its depiction in the movies. “Okay, so this is Harry’s bedroom. We’re going to need a massive distraction to sneak in, and some kind of disguise to get past the Fat Lady.”

“Neville Longbottom’s always leaving his cloak behind after lessons,” said Michael. Music played on the radio softly in the background, the Radio was giving us Shakin’ Stevens’ Green Door. “We could wait after class and steal that.”

“I have detention with him for missing my Potions lesson,” I said. “He blew up his cauldron again and Snape wasn’t happy.” 

“Snape’s never happy.”

“Yeah. We’ll do that,” I said. “Good thinking. There’s the first Quidditch match of the season coming up too, Gryffindor vs. Slytherin. That clears the House out, and the rivalry’s so big that even those who aren’t Quidditch fans will go. That’s the whole house.” 

“We’re going to need the password,” said Michael. “I’m working on it, though. My girlfriend’s a Gryffindor. I can ask her.”

“Ginny Weasley? You sure she’ll tell you?”

“Yes,” said Michael. “She loves me.”

I looked at Michael and realised something suddenly, it was like looking at a slightly Harry Potter if he’d had a good upbringing, complete with messy, unkempt hair. Ginny Weasley had a type, it seemed, and I – with blonde hair, very much did not fit the bill. I didn’t want to say anything though, I could tell from the way that Michael talked about her, he was very much in love with her. “Cool. So Quidditch matches will give me at least ninety minutes.”

“Unless Potter gets the Snitch within ten minutes like he did before,” said Michael.

“That’s why we’re going to do something stupid,” I said. “The Snitch, where’s it kept?”

“In Madam Hooch’s quarters,” Michael said. “But she has weekends off when they’re not Quidditch games.” 

“The Weasley Twins had a fake Snitch in their room that went wherever the owner wanted it to, kind of like a remote-control Snitch if you will. I saw it when they brought out their stuff.”

“You’re not seriously thinking of using it. In front of all the teachers?”

“In front of all the teachers,” I said. “In front of Dumbledore himself. It’s ambitious, but it’s the only way to be sure. To guarantee at least thirty minutes, we program it to just fly as high as possible away from the stadium, which should be all I need. You’re then going to release the snitch at the half an hour mark, the real one, and let it do its thing-”

“I didn’t sign up for this,” Michael said worriedly. “I’m not a Gryffindor. I’m not stupid.”

“That’s why we’ve got a contingency plan. You’re not going to be at the Stadium.”

“Oh?”

“You’re going to be in Detention, and there’s going to be a timed-release charm on the real snitch.”

“Detention? Who’s going to put me in Detention during the Quidditch Match? Half the teachers will be there, if not all of them. And I’m not ruining my perfect record-”

“Filch will, he hates the sport. Trust me. Please. This could be big. I’ll owe you. Remember, this can’t be as bad as potentially being found stealing from another housemate. Especially if Potter isn’t who he says he is.”

“You’re going to owe me for the rest of your life.”

“I’m counting on it. Now listen. Here’s what we’re going to do.”

III.

It was easy enough getting the Fake Snitch off the Weasley Twins, and it was easy enough getting Michael in detention, all he had to do was pull a prank on Filch. Getting the passcode out of Ginny proved to be considerably harder than expected, but eventually she caved, and offered a word of warning that we would not be welcomed there if we flaunted our House colours. Gryffindor were a tribal bunch, and I imagined most of them took cues from the ultras of the football world. The detention with Professor Snape came around quicker than possible, and I couldn’t believe my luck when I found a familiar someone sitting down on the table next to me as the only other person there: Neville Longbottom. He looked slightly wierded out by a Ravenclaw student being so happy to see him, but that happiness was quickly dashed by the mind-numbing boringness of the Potions Detention that followed, where a bored Snape made us translate from what was probably Latin, Potion ingredients for his current project, despite the fact I was pretty sure Latin wasn’t a thing in the Wizarding World.

I was convinced that like Binns, Snape just wanted to make us bored out of our minds. He remained aloof but I could see something was keeping him on edge. But then an idea came to mind that I thought couldn’t help but be worth a shot, remembering his hatred of Harry from the books being his main defining character trait for most of them. “Professor Snape, Sir?”

“Out with it boy. We don’t have all day.”

“Have you noticed anything odd about Harry Potter lately?”

Neville shot me a look, and I realised too late that he might take this information back to Harry. Which would put me in big trouble. 

“Beyond his usual arrogant ways, self-centred elitism brought about by a hero status and general disrespect for the laws and regulations that hold this society together?” said Snape, and I was surprised that he was even entertaining me. “Beyond that?”

“Beyond that,” I said. “Like something different. He didn’t speak up in Defence Against the Arts. He didn’t cause any kind of trouble at all.”

Snape’s eyebrows arched at this. “Are you sure? That sounds… extremely unlike Potter.”

“I know. Especially given his attitude to the Ministry,” I played my cards carefully. “Maybe enough to warrant a further investigation?”

“No,” said Snape, and I could sense his hatred of the Gryffindor as he spoke. “I would suggest that Potter is finally, after all these years… falling in line, if it were anybody else but Potter, who is simply incapable of doing so. But I would assume, just because of one minor incident, he is having, how do you muggles put it? An off day. He will be back on his usual shenanigans soon enough. And that can be counted on, as sure as there will be nosy Ravenclaws who think that they know too much about what’s happening around them.”

That was what I was hoping for, what I was really hoping for, but decided not to bring anything up at the risk of pushing Snape too far and the conversation was not discussed until after the lesson, when Neville pulled me aside leaving the classroom at around 8pm. At first I was worried, thinking that he’d discovered the fact that his cloak that he’d taken off at the beginning of the class and left in the cloakroom was missing, but there was no sign of malice when he spoke: only concern. We walked down the corridors to the sound of thunder and clattering weather. “Harry’s changed ever since You-Know-Who came back. It’s like he’s different. Maybe he just took the loss of Cedric Diggory pretty hard. Merlin knows, we all did.”

“You believe he’s back then? You-Know-Who?”

“Yes. If Harry and Dumbledore believe he’s back, that’s good enough for me. But Harry, you’re right. He would have challenged Professor Umbridge. And he’s become more distant lately, I don’t even see him with Ron and Hermione that much anymore. It’s like he’s become more reclusive. Why do you care about him so much? You’re a Ravenclaw. I thought you lot looked out for yourselves.”

“It’s a long story,” I said, and that seemed to be enough for Neville, as we were walking back to our respective common rooms, not noticing his cloak sticking out of the back pocket of my trousers. “Listen. Can you do me a favour?”

“Depends on what it is.”

“If things start to go, you know, wrong, can you let me know?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, if Harry starts behaving odd. Even more odd than normal,” I didn’t know what I was going to do about it, but I’d been paying more and more attention to the books, not the Rowling books, actual, honest-to-god, books, living up to my reputation as a Ravenclaw, and If it came down to it, maybe I could go head to head with Harry himself one day. Although that day was a long day off.

“I can’t promise much,” Neville said. “I’m not about to betray my own that quickly, for a Ravenclaw I barely know. Something big would have to happen for me to even consider.”

“Don’t think of it as a betrayal,” I said. “It’s not a betrayal. We’re looking out for Harry. I’m not trying to hurt him. I want to help him. I want to be wrong; I want to believe that he’s just the same person, I’m just… making sure. Call me a concerned third party, Oh, and by the way? I’d stay clear of that corridor if I were you. Filch goes through there on his rounds and my friend Michael has a prank laid down for him.”

Neville took a step back. “Wait… why are you pranking Filch?”

“Michael’s fed up with his negative attitude towards the students and wants to do something about it,” I said, not wanting to risk Neville letting slip to somebody else that I was planning on using Filch as a distraction, at least not yet, and carefully keeping his cloak out of his reach. “We should make ourselves scarce. He’s due around here in about half an hour.”

“Right. Although I thought you Ravenclaws were smart. You do realise he’s only going to hate us more after this if you humiliate him?”

“I tried telling him that,” I lied, and left the corridor going up the stairwell as Neville went down, showing Michael the cloak as completion of my mission. I bumped into Michael waiting at the top of the stairs. “Neville says Harry’s been acting odd. Like, it could be more than grief.”

“Longbottom? You mates with him, now?”

“No. Just it might be helpful to have a spy in Gryffindor Tower.”

“Can’t he look in Potter’s room?”

“He’s going to be at the game. He won’t abandon his House for us.”

“And I will,” Michael said, waiting by the stairwell to be caught ‘red-handed’ by Filch. “You know, you’re going to owe me. BIG time. If anything goes wrong, we’re both going to be in serious trouble.”

“That’s why nothing is going to go wrong,” I said, not entirely convinced. “You got to believe me, Michael. Please tell me you got the Password.”

“It’s…. Gryffindor,” said Michael with a sigh, and I looked at him. It couldn’t be that easy, could it? Guess there had to be a Wizarding equivalent for naming your password, well, Password. 

“Really?” I rolled my eyes. “That’s it?”

“Really. I tried it and everything, that was my reaction too. The Fat Lady must be having an off day. You got Neville’s coat?”

“A lot of people are having off days lately. I got it. I talked to him and he didn’t even notice I had it.”

“You know… I think this might actually work,” Michael said, looking at me in the corridor. A cry of alarm went up from down the stairs, with the prank kicking into effect. “You better bolt. Go. Quickly. I got this. Don’t let me down.”

“I won’t,” I said, hugging Michael before leaving. Michael sat down on the floor, and burst out laughing loudly, putting it on as convincingly as possible in a bid to draw Filch’s attention. Maybe if things went south for him in the Wizarding World, he had a career in acting after all. 

I retreated to my bedroom, and not being able to sleep, turned on the radio and found a muggle channel, and an eerie voice filtered through again: “ _Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” a voice was saying through the radio, flickering and disorientated with the cracks. It was the voice. It was my mother’s voice, and she was crying, as though she was reading a book to someone who was about to drift off to bed, and that someone was, I realised - me. It couldn't have been anyone else. “Maybe this will get through to you somehow. It’s your old copy, that you used to read when you were young. Look, it’s got the replacement cover and everything. You read it too many times. Let’s see: what do you remember. Here we go. Okay._ ”

There was a pause, a hiss of static, and rather than shutting off the voice, I embraced it, knowing it was – could it be? My only link to that world. “ _Chapter One. This opening line, I don’t know… it always works on me. Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much_.”

And then, just like that, the line of communication to whatever I had that resembled home was gone, and I found myself crying myself to sleep ahead of the big day this weekend.


	3. Under the Table

I.

MATCHDAY. GAMEDAY. HEIST day. The Snitch had been replaced, Filch had been mad enough to justify putting Michael in detention during the Quidditch Match (it was Slytherin vs. Gryffindor anyway, so no great loss to society), and soon the plan was in place to raid Gryffindor Tower. I stood at the Clocktower overlooking the pitch field from above, having replaced the fake snitch with audacity, waiting to see if my plan would work, sporting binoculars that I’d also acquired from Fred and George, that displayed the score of the games should I so desire. Potentially handy if I wanted to know how long was left. My eyes trained on where the Snitch would go, I watched it skyrocket around and then ascend upwards after I set the timer on my watch. Go time. Michael’s work done, I headed to Gryffindor Tower, and made it to the door a few minutes later.

“Shouldn’t you be at the game, loyal Gryffindor? Today of all days. I almost feel like not letting you in because of that,” said the Fat Lady.

I put on my best imitation of a coughing sound, making sure to feign illness and show my fake colours. Ravenclaw was probably rolling in her grave right now, but it didn’t matter – as far as I was concerned, the only thing that did right now, consequences to this world be damned, was getting home and getting home quickly as possible, with a story to tell that nobody would believe. “Sorry. I really wanted to watch Gryffindor smash Slytherin, but I…”

I coughed again, and she understood. “I’ll still need the password, however. You must understand.”

“Gryffindor,” I said, praying it would work. After a moments pause, The Fat Lady opened the door for me. “You may want to change your password to something more difficult to guess, by the way. Anybody could get in.”

“Why thank you, young Gryffindor, for alerting me. I had never considered that,” said The Fat Lady. “I will change it immediately.”

I couldn’t help but punch the air once I was in the common room and the door closed behind me. I checked my watch, and seven minutes had passed. Plenty of time. Making my way forward, I was relieved to see that the Gryffindor Common Room was virtually the same as the films, powerfully imposing and proud in all its glory. I stood at the statue of Godric Gryffindor and basked in his brilliance, it almost felt wrong to steal from such a proud figure. “Sorry,” I said, by way of apology, on my way up. Typically, there was no response.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up on end as I marched up, I almost had the unnerving feeling that I was being watched, but by whom I could not tell. I sported my – Neville’s – cloak proudly, with a false pretence of fitting in. True to form, the fifth year’s Boy’s Dormitory remained empty and was virtually deserted, allowing for me to easily decipher Harry’s bed if by process of elimination – there was only one bed in the room not adorned by some kind of iconography, be it Chudley Cannons or West Ham United. I approached the chest next to his desk like I was one of Ocean’s Eleven, and whispered, “Alohomora,” at it. It shot up, all too easily. The chest belonged to Harry – there was a label, H.P., adorned on its surface, and I saw all the sorts of typical notebooks and class books stacked unorganised in its home. All… perfectly ordinary. I saw the Invisibility Cloak, carefully folded away (that careless, Harry?) and for a second was tempted to take it but that would only cause a mess of trouble that would almost certainly see Dumbledore alerted by Harry once he realised something was wrong. I didn’t have big enough balls to risk that – breaking into Gryffindor Tower was where I drew the line.

I felt around the edges of the trunk and grew frustrated, kicking it – I’d expected to find something in it, but I should have known it shouldn’t have been this easy. Apart from being very painful and stinging my foot, it did enough to disjoint the suitcase long enough for me to be successful and uncover something underneath the suitcase, sticking out from where the carpet should be a slightly loose wooden floorboard. There was no way the Hogwarts design team was this shabby, so I took it apart, and then, bingo! A book, lying there untitled on its side. No author, no initials – this had to be some kind of journal. I snapped at it and lifted it up, looking at it and flipping through its pages. But my moment of triumph turned to disappointment almost instantly, as two things changed my situation on its head within seconds.

The first thing to go wrong was the fact that there was nothing in the book, it was blank, full of empty pages with no context to them at all. Not even random scribbles, just empty pages, waiting to be filled. Had Harry gotten a diary with the intention of writing it yet? Was it a secret diary, ala Tom Riddle? I had no time to answer that question, because the second thing to go wrong at more or less the same time as the first was about ten times more immediate and pressing. 

Because the second thing to go wrong was Neville Longbottom, who was beginning to make a habit of catching people unawares when they weren’t supposed to be there. “It was you who stole my cloak. I should have known, thief.”

“It isn’t what it looks like-”

“You’re a spy, is that it? You’re an impostor, working for You-Know-Who! Come to steal Harry’s things while he’s at a game! I shouldn’t have talked to you about him. You’re a snake in a raven’s clothing! Dumbledore will hear about this and then you’ll be expelled.”

“No he won’t,” I said, panicking. “You see, the thing is Neville, I’m not a spy for Voldemort, I hate the man. He’s the Bogeyman’s Bogeyman. I want him dead as much as you or Harry, or anyone for that matter. But I have a different reason, something that’s more worrying than the first, and more important. I believe Harry Potter has been replaced by someone, he isn’t who he says he is, and if he’s not who he says he is then we could all be in serious trouble. I wanted to confirm that he hadn’t been switched out so I could get back to my life, but…”

“How would you know that Harry’s replaced?” Neville said. “Why, or how, would someone want to replace him?”

“Because of how he acts,” I said. “I know how he acts, I mentioned to you before. I know how he acts because… because I’m a time traveller. I’m from the future. I know exactly what’s going to happen next and I know exactly how the future’s going to play out.”

There was a pause, I realised that Neville was the first person who I’d come close to admitting it to, and he waited for a second, in disbelief, but silently, not reaching for his wand. It helped that I had lowered mine, and he said, after a second. “That’s impossible.”

“I can prove it,” I said, checking my watch. I had to advance play by play for a few minutes. “I can prove it, please, Neville, listen to me. I can prove I’m from the future.”

“Okay. But prove in a way that I know you’re from the future.”

There went my chance of convincing him that there would be a Han Solo origin story film in a few years. Instead, a crazy, madhap idea turned to mind. “You’ve got a radio don’t you? Any chance it can pick up what Lee’s saying on the match?”

“Yes. They did it for the Triwizard Tournament last year so the people at home could listen in, and made the microphones go through the radio. We did the same for the Quidditch Games,” said Neville. “Okay, Mr. Hurst. If you are even Tommy Hurst, anymore, that is… let’s say you’re from the future. I don’t understand why I’m even entertaining the idea, but if you are, I’m guessing you’ll know how this match plays out. And if it’s the same way as your future…”

“I can’t predict how anything after the first thirty minutes happens,” I said after a pause, wracking my brains hard. “But I can tell you the first five goals. Or tries. Or whatever.”

“It’s already twenty minutes in. How can I know that you’ve not already been listening?”

“Did you hear a radio when you came up here?”

“No.”

“Then just give me this, okay?”

“Fine,” Neville said, and looked at me. Not dropping his wand, his eyes darting for the exit, waiting for somebody else to show up, “Go. What are you waiting for, Hurst?”

“Well, for starters, the Slytherins are taking the piss out of Ron Weasley,” I said, addressing the ground. “They know he’s ‘keeper, replacing Oliver Wood, and they want to abuse that weakness. They’re chanting at him, Weasley is Our King. They think it’s going to be easy, and I hate to break it you, it is going to be easy, at least at first. Ron gets better, but remember, it’s like replacing Thierry Henry with Theo Walcott, he was never going to live up to the hype that people had on him, and Walcott actually had hype.”

“Who?”

“You’ll understand that reference in a few years,” I said. “Sorry. Assuming that’s not enough?”

“I’m not waiting a few years to find out whether you’re telling the truth or not.”

“Okay… so, Ron starts, and things go badly for Gryffindor almost from the get go. Slytherin are better, Gryffindor’s training isn’t enough, Slytherin tear them apart. They’re ruthless and unforgiving. Gryffindor break apart during the abuse – Warrington scores first, there’s no surprise there, have you seen him? He’s a tank – it’s followed up by Pucey, then another two Slytherin goals, I don’t know the scorers but it’s Slytherin who score them.”

Neville hastily turned the radio on, worried but at the same time, also intrigued. He held his wand at me, refusing to let go. I held my breath, waiting as Lee Johnson narrated the scorers, “And the game hasn’t started brightly for Gryffindor at all, it’s horrible to see them being torn apart out there-”

Neville’s eyebrows raised in my direction. “Okay, you got lucky there, but anyone could have called that. Ron isn’t exactly a top keeper yet. I’ll admit that-”

I shushed him. “You’re missing the play-by-play, Neville. Come on. It’s almost as if you want me to lose.”

“I do want you to lose.”

Lee Johnson’s voice filtered through, both Neville and I watching on, as chants, Weasley is Our King, echoed through the radio in the background, clear as day. “-And it looks as if it’s going to be a long afternoon for the Gryffindor fans, Weasley is leaking goals left right and centre. To recap for those listening at home, I wish I’d have stayed at home because this is turning into a massacre, although the Slytherins aren’t helping, they’re playing ugly, really, really ugly, it’s like a warzone out there-”

“JORDAN!” McGonagall’s voice, it must have been, loud enough to be heard in the background even presumably without some kind of voice enhancement. 

“-Right, anyway, to recap,” said Lee, clearing his throat, and my eyes shot up in jubilation as he read the next words, “It’s 40 nothing to Slytherin. Warrington opened the goal, followed by Pucey, then Warrington again, then Montague, and oh wait, here we go, finally a break in play for Gryffindor, come on Katie, you can do this-”

“That’s impossible,” Neville said, alarmed, and then held his wand back up at me in disbelief. “I said five goals. That’s only four. Who scores next?”

“Angelina Johnson,” I said. “Listen. The roars of the crowd, those are Gryffindor roars. They’re cheering Katie Bell…”

“But if Katie has the Quaffle-” said Neville, but was interrupted again, this time by Lee, before he could continue.

“-Look at that build-up play, Katie Bell with a brilliant break-away down the left flank, Montague can’t catch her, she throws the ball, no mistake, wasting time, it’s Johnson – Angelina Johnson, and that’s a chance! Goal! Johnson scores, it’s forty-ten.”

“And there… we, go! Get the frak in, Neville. I could kiss you right here, right now. Get in, my man. Get the frak in. That’s how it’s done!” I was jubilant, yet at the same time, it felt odd using real world swear words in the Harry Potter world: this was a children’s book, after all, so made-up ones – albeit, ones stolen from Battlestar Galactica, would have to do. Cheering loudly. Never before had I been pushed to recall the book details in such accuracy before, and you know – that age-old Twitter question where it was often asked what music lyrics would you have to recite in order to prevent a trigger from being pulled at your head? This was the book version; this was my version. This was my time. Relief washed over my face – I was happy, and even Neville was kind of happy that Gryffindor had scored. I had never considered the fact that Neville might actually not go through and let me out, go back on his word, not once, and he was too, I was so caught up in the moment, not until he actually did.

“I’m turning you in. You got lucky.”

“There’s nothing about it, Neville, listen to me, please, please, listen to me! It’s only a matter of time, and Harry needs to be Harry again before the end of this year or else Voldemort wins, he gets what he wants and we’re all in big trouble.” 

“If you know the future, why don’t you stop You-Know-Who yourself?” reasoned Neville, and then a look of realization hit him, and he hesitated. “Unless… you’re from a future where… You-Know-Who wins? You haven’t been able to stop him?”

Hell, don’t look at me. He’d come to that conclusion by himself – I’d just said I was from the future. Which was not only technically true, but also avoided the issue of explaining that he was a fictional character, which was far more complicated and I didn’t want to risk a Harry Potter-style remake of The Truman Show. Whatever I was going to say, it turned out I didn’t have to – because Michael Corner was there, out of breath, anxious and angry as hell. He’d done just about enough to knock Neville unconscious due to the element of surprise, and said, “Please tell me you found something.”

“I found something, I don’t know if we should take it or not,” and held up an empty book.

Michael hit me. “You idiot, did you think it would be that easy? We’re so, so unbelievably screwed now. Neville Longbottom knows about you, he knows that you had help, there’s one other person who left detention early because he promised he’d do it another day for longer hours – and that’s me – and what’s more, is the match is over, Potter caught the snitch, and they’re on their way back, so we’re going to be caught red-handed.”

“Shit,” I swore, and Michael shot me a dark look, as if he knew more than he was letting on. 

“We need to go,” Michael said. “Come on, put the book back. We can’t risk it being found, not now, our best bet is to convince Neville that we were just there because we wanted to see what the Gryffindor Common Room looks like.”

I decided not to mention that when he came too, he’d be grappling with the fact that I was from the future. “Fine,” I said in frustration, putting the suitcase back to where it was and following Michael out of the Boy’s Dorm. As we made our way down, our worst fears were realised – the doors were opening, and in came a dejected Quidditch Team. Angelica Johnson was angry at something, at someone – at Harry, scolding him for lashing out at the Slytherins. Okay, so that part happened like canon at least. Michael grabbed me and in what felt like a split second, we ducked underneath the low-lying table in the centre of the room, keeping ourselves as quiet as possible – Michael could get away with being found – he and Ginny were a thing after all, but I couldn’t, especially when tempers were as high as they were, and the last thing anyone wanted was to find Neville Longbottom unconscious in the Boy’s Dorm followed by Two Ravenclaws hiding underneath the table.

Luckily for me they stayed around the fire a bit, talking, and it was the first time I’d had a literal, front row seat to Harry, his feet were almost underneath the table, worryingly close to where I was. “You did as well as you could have done, Ron,” Hermione was saying. “Listen. I was thinking about Professor Umbridge, she’s clamping down on all of our freedoms, not teaching us anything about lessons, it’s time we did something about it.”

“Oh?” Harry said.

“I was debating about waiting on this for a better time, but I think, now, we need to after that performance. We need a club. If we’re not going to learn Defence Against the Dark Arts with… Voldemort… out there-”

Michael flinched underneath the table, and caused the table to shudder.

“The table’s loose again,” Ron said, taking off his shoe and placing it by the table, right next to my face – his shoe, that stank, really, really badly, especially considering someone had just been playing a high energy sport for the past hour or so. “They need to fix it, I’m tired of having to use my shoes each time. It’ll be winter soon; my feet will get cold.”

I slowly made a move with my hand to cover my nose, doing my best not to cough. Even the slightest movement could detect them, I was lucky the table was draped in red, I was lucky that there was no lessons that we had to go to today, I couldn’t afford to skip anymore after that Snape no-show, but it also meant that Gryffindor had no lessons today and the common room was full, busier than normal. We had to wait until dinner to make a move.

“So, this club,” said Harry. “What are you proposing? Are you sure it’s needed?”

“It definitely is,” Hermione said. “Me and Ron, we’ve been thinking about it, and we think you’d do great as a teacher. You’re Harry Potter. Kids look up to you. They want to learn from you. You’re the best in our year in Defence Against the Dark Arts. As much as it pains me to admit it. We need someone who’s practical. We’re barely learning theory, if you’d call it that. If this was a muggle school, we might as well be watching films every lesson.”

“I see where you’re going,” said Harry, “But I don’t see why we should risk it. The Ministry is clamping down on freedom, we just got banned from playing Quidditch again. What if Umbridge finds out? She’s going to blame us, she’s going to blame the teachers, if we’re caught it’s not just our heads but McGonagall’s and Dumbledore’s. Plus, I don’t think I’m ready to teach. None of the Sixth Years or Seventh Years will listen to me.”

“It’s a way to open up house divide, you heard the hat at the beginning of the year. We bring Ravenclaws, Hufflepuffs in, we get a group, we get a union. Please, Harry-”

“Neville, are you alright?” Dean Thomas’ voice snapped to attention, he’d been there for a while but this was the first time anyone had seen him, I could just about have made out Neville’s shoes on the steps of the Boy’s Dormitory, he’d recovered and made his way down, and I guessed he had some sort of bloody nose from what had happened, either from Michael or when he’d hit the floor. “Should I get Madam Pomfrey? What happened?”

“I missed the game,” he said. “Sorry, Harry.”

“Don’t be,” Harry said. “It was nothing special.”

Alarm bells. More alarm bells. I wondered who was looking at Harry right now, realising the same thing that I was. Quidditch wasn’t just anything special to Harry, it was his lifeline. I was surprised he’d allowed himself to be suspended by Umbridge in the first place, but being suspended from Quidditch I guessed meant no distractions from whatever his plan was. At the moment, it looked like it was something along the lines of giving Umbridge more power, breaking the Resistance before it could begin, and doing as much as he could to keep them under control. “Who did that to you, Neville?” Hermione said.

“Oh, it was nothing,” Neville said hastily, and I breathed a sigh of relief, but also demonstrated an expression of confusion – especially after being knocked out, why hadn’t he spoken? “An accident.”

“Neville,” said Ron, concerned. Maybe Neville was starting to believe me, and hadn’t before. What had changed? Why not spill the beans?

“Forget it, guys,” Neville said. “It was nothing.”

“Are you sure, Neville? You need to tell me if something’s wrong,” said Harry, and I sensed his tone change, instead of sounding comforting, he sounded threatening. Quietly threatening, like the kind of mobster in a mafia movie who sits at the back of the room, and says a few words whilst the others are saying many yet makes ten times more of an impact with those few words. “I need to know. I really do. You’re on my side, aren’t you?”

My side. Not Gryffindor’s side. Not their side. My side. Like he was developing some sort of cult. Some sort of public persona that was different to the Harry in the books. I remembered Harry not even going after Marietta once she snitched on the DA – that was Hermione. Which made me make a mental note in my head: Don’t piss off Hermione Granger. Words we could all live by. “I am, Harry,” Neville said, but the nervousness in his voice was going away. Maybe because he was still trying to figure out what was going on: a time traveller correctly predicting the results of a Quidditch game before it happened would throw anybody off their game if they hadn’t encountered it before. “I really am. It was nothing. I have them all the time, especially around this time of year…”

“Alright…” said Harry after a pause, seemingly addressing Hermione. “I’ll do it.”

What changed his mind? Was it Neville? Could he suspect that he was hiding something from him?

“Do what, Harry?” Ron asked, concerned.

“The Defence Against the Dark Arts Club,” said Harry. “Although we need a better name. But we can work on that. For now, I know where we should host it. Somewhere secret. Tell me, Hermione, Ron. What do you know of the Room of Requirement?”

Well, that was new. Harry wasn’t supposed to be aware of the Room before Dobby told him. I gulped, trying to make it a quiet one, and in part because of the stench of the feet. Neville coughed loudly, and I wondered if it was intentional, covering it up, and walked towards the table, I could hear feet moving through the crowd. “Your Defence club? I like it. I’m in.”

“Good. Anyone else?” Harry said, opening the floor to the Gryffindor table. The conversation had moved on. “We need to learn Defence Against the Dark Arts. It’s the most important class of them all, and we’re being short-changed. And why not open it up to the Ravenclaws and the Hufflepuffs too?”

“I like that idea. It should be open to everyone,” said Hermione.

“Not the Slytherins, though,” said Ron. “They’ll only tell on us.”

“There won’t be any rats in my club,” said Harry, harshly, glancing across at Ron. “Especially not any Slytherins. We’re going to need a full veto process before they join. Anyone who has connections to anyone who’s mates with Umbridge. Out. Instantly.” 

“That seems like a good call, mate,” Ron said, going along with it, and he continued bringing up the Room of Requirement again that Harry had been distracted about when Neville showed up. “You mentioned the Room of Requirement earlier. Do you know where it is? What is it?” 

I wondered why Harry was so insistent on this when he had complied with what Umbridge had said so far, but I was relieved when he said the magic words “I’ll show you,” and made for the door. “Hermione, Ron. You two free now?”

“Always,” said Ron. I noticed that the tone of the conversation had taken a darker turn than the events in the book and I’m pretty sure Harry had somehow sped up the turn of events. Was he trying to make things happen faster? And to what end? I wasn’t sure yet. But this conversation was the final nail in the coffin, and I was surprised nobody else had realised it as they hustled out of the common room.

Michael looked at me once they heard the closing of the doors, and the sound of the rest of the Gryffindor Common Room either following them or making their way upstairs, and he was the first to break the silence, around thirty minutes later, breathing a sigh of relief. “You heard everything I just heard, right?”

“Yes,” said a voice, lowering himself down underneath the table before I could speak. Panicking, I turned my head in the direction of where it was coming from, only for relief to wash over my face when I saw Neville. “They’re all gone, you can come out now.”

“Thanks,” I said, helping Michael to his feet in a newly empty common room. And then, to Neville; “You knew we were here all along? Why didn’t you turn us in?”

“I’m not sure if I believe your whole story yet,” Neville said. “But I do believe you on one point. One crucial point that saves your skin, yet at the same time puts us all in very, very big trouble. I’ve never seen Harry like that before. So dismissive of his friends. So, controlling. Manipulative. He read the room. Almost scary. I don’t know how you caught on so fast, but you’re right. You’re not the impostor. _He is_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’ll be more conversations with Neville and Tommy next as Neville grapples with the realisation that Harry’s from the future. I wanted to pay homage to a scene from Parasite here (Oscar winner 2020!), whilst also keep the tension high and have Neville learn that Harry was not Harry before he could tell someone about Tommy not being Tommy, and as we’re telling all of this from Tommy’s perspective, keep Tommy in the same room at the same time.
> 
> Neville’s come to his own conclusions about Tommy too, without his help. I also wanted to move up the events of the book and start Dumbledore’s Army earlier than planned, I want to keep this fic at no more than ten chapters, as the shorter the better. Maybe stretch it out to thirteen max, depending on how things play out (I’ve learnt from working on The Fire Waltz if I try to tell multi-year stories I never finish them, whereas I finished the one term- year story Have You Ever Seen the Rain? which coincidentally is an alternate version of Goblet of Fire, but in no ways connected to this story), so expect to see the canon events sped up or condensed so we can get to the stuff that you haven’t all seen before. 
> 
> For those looking for my previous work, you can find them on Fanfiction.net under the username Rogue Fifty-Two, where this fic is also being crossposted.


	4. Out of Time

**I.**

NEVILLE, MICHAEL AND I left the Gryffindor Common Room and I returned his cloak to Neville, who took it as I apologised, offering a meek “sorry” by way of comfort. Michael performed a spell to clean up Neville’s nose, and apologised too. 

Neville was the first one to make small-talk by way of conversation, “Hey, Hurst? A word.”

Michael looked at me. “Go on,” I said. “It’s fine.”

“He doesn’t know?” Neville said, once Michael left, realising something. “That you’re from the future, I mean.”

“No. The fewer people that know, the better. You can’t tell anyone about this.”

“Have you always been from the future, or is this just a recent thing?” Neville said. “I have so many questions, I’m still trying to get around the fact that time travel is possible for more than a few hours…”

“Well, it was a bit more complicated that, and I’ve been back from the future since this year. You say Harry’s been fine up until this year too.”

“Ever since the school year started, he’s been a bit different. I just didn’t want to admit it until now. Did you find any proof that you were looking for?”

“A blank diary,” I said. “Nothing in it, it was just… empty.”

“That’s odd. Although not uncommon. Did you write anything in it?”

“I didn’t have the time.”

“Sorry. I can have another look-”

“No, Harry already suspects you,” I said, as we walked down a corridor, ending up at a clock tower overlooking the castle grounds. “He’s setting up the Defence Club to try and ward out any potential spies, traitors. He might even find it odd that you didn’t go to the Room of Requirement with him.”

“Even with the broken nose?”

“Especially with the broken nose,” I said. “We’re in dangerous territory here, Neville. It could be anyone in that body right now. Literally anyone. I haven’t even got a clue.”

“Who was it in your timeline? You never found out?”

“I’d rather not say anything about the future,” I said. “I don’t want to risk changing it in case it creates something worse, and I let something slip that ends up working against us.”

“What could be worse than You-Know-Who winning?” he still believed that that was where I was from.

“I could think of many things,” I said. “Especially if what half of what I’ve heard is true.”

“Fine. Keep your secrets. What’s your next move? You can’t go to the club.”

“Why not?”

“He’ll spot you. He’ll work out who you are and then that’s it,” said Neville. “It’s a trap.” 

“Neville, my friend,” I said, even though I was well aware that we weren’t even friends, barely acquaintances – if that, but it felt good to have someone on my side, at least for now. “There’s no other way I can see that we can get that information. We can’t kidnap Harry. We can’t talk to Ron and Hermione about him. They’ll be harder to convince than you.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. This is a Harry who knows exactly what they want to hear,” I said. “Look. He’s playing up Ron’s hatred of Slytherins. Hermione’s penchant for extra work, by forming the club and putting in extra commitment. Gryffindor’s sense of community by uniting you all together. It’s us against the world, and all that. So the only way, the only option that we have right now is staring us slap bang in the face.”

“What’s that?”

“Harry is setting a trap,” I said, moving away from the clocktower and heading away from Neville. “We’re going to spring it. Do me a favour, Neville. Don’t tell anyone, right? Not even Dumbledore.”

“Wait!” Neville called after me before I reached the stairs. “Who says Harry hasn’t come back in time to stop you, and not the other way around?”

I paused for a moment and thought about it, and put on my best 80’s movie bad guy voice. “Because, my friend. If I came here to stop Harry – with all the knowledge of what’s to come in the future – I would have already done it by now.”

**II.**

I met up with Michael around the corner to find that he’d been waiting for me out of earshot. “So are we doing this?” Michael said, asking me. “Like, really doing this?”

“Yeah,” I said. “We’re infiltrating the Defence Club.”

I was careful not to call it Dumbledore’s Army. Very careful. There was already one person too many who knew my secret, and Neville had raised my worst fears – what if people believed that, when the truth came to light, that Harry had come back to stop me and not the other way around? Everybody had heard of The Boy Who Lived before. Everybody had known what he did. Nobody had heard of Tommy Hurst. At least I could take some comfort in the fact that once this was over, one way or another – that would be the least of my worries.

Music was playing when I returned to my quarters in the Ravenclaw Common Room and I realised how lucky I was to have a secluded room compared to that of Gryffindor, imagine living with the same seven people in the same space for seven years? It would be a nightmare. Especially if you didn’t like one of them. Thankfully, Rowena Ravenclaw understood that everyone had their solitude, and I found out that Terry Boot was the one listening to the music when I got here. I hadn’t spoken to much of the other Ravenclaws, and it seemed that old Tommy hadn’t either, because Terry didn’t notice the difference. “Fancy a game of chess, Thomas?”

For all I knew, Tommy could have been an avid chess player and I was not, so I had to sit down and join in. Ominously perhaps, the music playing in the background was The Rolling Stones’ Out of Time, the strings version, and I wondered if it had been a deliberate choice or whether or not it was just on the radio. “Sure, why not.”

“Good,” Terry said. “You know, Tom. We haven’t played a game in a while. I’m looking forward to beating you again.”

He took white and I took black, and we started our moves with ease. He was no Ron Weasley and neither was I, so we made several errors along the way, and eventually, pushed back into a corner, I found myself faced to face with the prospect of losing. “What do you want to be when you grow up, Tom? I haven’t asked you this before. I’m doing a survey.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t really thought about it.”

“Well, that’s odd. A Ravenclaw usually has their whole life planned out ahead of them by now,” said Terry, and I realised my potential mistake. Terry studied me. “I mean, Michael wants to be a lawyer. In the muggle world. How boring can that be? We have others, I mean, obviously Cho wants to be a Quidditch Player. Jeremy wants to be a librarian. But you? No idea at all? You can’t just… make it up as you go along, you know. Life needs a plan if you’re going to get from point A… to point B. Bishop to F5. Check.”

“You see, sometimes it’s better not to have a plan,” I said. “Plans can go wrong. Sometimes disastrously so. Nobody in life is where they want to be when they were five. If I was, I’d be in NASA astronaut training right now, or a magician.”

“Don’t you mean-”

“Not a wizard. Magician,” I corrected him, knowing where he was going. “Card tricks, and all that jazz. I loved them when I was younger. Case in point. The art of distraction is a subtle one, one that not taken seriously, can lead to glaring difficulties. See, take this game for example. You’ve been investing all your energy in creating a plan to box in my King. Every move you’ve made has been telegraphed over and over again. So I’ve been baiting you.”

Terry studied the board, and his eyes widened. “Knight takes Bishop, at B2.” I said, triumphantly. “Check, and mate. Sometimes even the best plans in life fail. Therefore – it’s better to have no plan at all. Night, Terry.”

Terry was still looking at the board, wondering how he could have lost, by the time I was in bed, dreaming of a world that I could never return to.

**III.**

It seemed the longer I spent at Hogwarts, the more I was starting to run into canon characters. After befriending Neville Longbottom and playing chess against Terry Boot, I felt like I belonged – Neville and I bonded over a mutual passion for Herbology at lunch, it turned out that the class was something I’d taken a liking to which was odd considering I was never a fan of biology, and I even played Quidditch against Cho Chang in the lessons that I had during that year. Granted – Cho was so good Madame Hooch had put us all on one team and had us try to get the Quaffle off her, to which none of us managed, and after almost falling off my broom two times and almost being sick three, I reluctantly came to the conclusion that if I was going to stay in this world then a Quidditch megastar, I was not going to be. Terry had raised a valid point though – if there was no return home, I needed a Plan B. Hell – I didn’t even know the status of my parents in this world, and I felt it was something that I should investigate, especially when one sent me a letter.

 _Dear Tommy_ , it read:

_I’m just writing in to check that everything’s alright. I know you’re having fun at the school up there, but you haven’t written to us in a while and I’m just checking in to see that everything is okay. Reya is well, she’s looking forward to starting Hogwarts next year. And Allie is performing well in her Auror training. Controlling two magical kids is harder than we could have ever expected it would be, but it helps that the third is grown up and we rarely ever see them. As for your mother and I, we are doing well, working in the law enforcement has its ups and downs, as you’re well and truly aware of, whilst mum’s teaching has reached all new heights. With Christmas approaching, feel free to get back to me with anything that you want, and I’ll look into it for you. Non-magical is easier, but I have a few contacts in the wizarding world._

_Love,_

_Dad._

The letter hit me harder than I realised – I had two sisters, Reya and Allie. Allie was a freaking Auror, Reya was coming to Hogwarts next year. How was I supposed to hide who I was from them? Michael hadn’t mentioned them much at all, so maybe I was in the clear – but family always saw through you and my disguise would be up with in seconds. I felt that I had to write back and did so almost instantly, even though I’d never met the man before.

_Dear Dad,_

_Send my love to Reya, Allie and mum for me. Reya better be in Ravenclaw when she joins, I feel like she’ll do well here! Sorry I haven’t written – my studies have started to prove to be more intense than usual this year but I am coping fine. I won a chess game for the first time in a while, too! I beat Terry. In terms of presents, I’ll leave it up to you. Nothing too fancy. Just keep it a surprise. Thanks, and let me know if there’s anything that you lot want. I’ll try to make it back for Christmas, too._

_Tommy_

I had no intention of being here by Christmas, so hopefully the normal Tommy would be restored by then. But now I realised what I’d just told Michael, previously due to the lack of contact with family I had no stakes in this world, nothing for Tommy to live for – I’d thought he was an orphan, so, perhaps unfairly, I felt that I could get away with putting his body through hell if I wanted to. It wasn’t mine. That was rather selfish. I realised that now. I should have checked before I considered throwing myself off the tower, in one of my stupider moves that I was thankful Michael hadn’t made public knowledge. Now, with Reya, Allie and Tommy’s parents potentially losing someone dear to them: I couldn’t afford to see Tommy die. No, the task grew all the harder for me in that split second from when I opened the mail that an Owl, which I guessed was also mine, sent to me.

Ginny Weasley found me and Michael in the owlery where I was returning my letter, and kissed Michael, both their hair blowing in the wind. It was a passionate lovers’ kiss that made me uncomfortable to be witnessing. She’d come alone, and I noticed that she hadn’t brought anyone with him. “Thank you for wanting to come to the Defence Club with us,” Ginny said. “I’d go alone, but it’s better with you two. The lesson starts soon. I can show you where it is. How are your parents, Tommy?”

“They’re fine, thank you,” I said. “How’re yours?”

“Good. Holding in there. It helps that they have the house to themselves now every child is at Hogwarts,” said Ginny. “It got a bit crowded with us all there.”

“I can imagine,” I said. “Let’s hope Harry’s as good as everyone says he is.”

“Oh, trust me, he is,” said Ginny. “We already had a small lesson with him, just the Gryffindors. He’s scaringly good. I wouldn’t want to be the one to challenge him to a duel, that’s for sure.”

That felt like an ill omen. Like if this were a book, that would be the moment of foreshadowing. A sense of unease hung over me as I posted my letter. There were stakes now. More stakes than ever before. I couldn’t let Tommy die. I had to find another route home. Maybe an exorcism? Maybe… maybe. It wasn’t that simple anymore. I supposed it never was.

_(You don't know what's going on,  
You've been away for far too long,  
You can't come back and think you are still mine,  
You're out of touch, my baby,  
My poor discarded baby,  
I said, baby, baby, baby, you're out of time)_

**IV.**

The Room of Requirement resembled a fighting pit, and I realised that I was walking into a deleted scene from Fight Club. By the time we’d got there, two students were already duelling, Katie Bell and Zach Smith, who had surprisingly come considering I remembered vaguely his objections about the club from the book. Harry was giving them hints and tips about what to do from the side-lines, more like a boxing trainer than a school teacher, and was baiting the crowd at the same time. This was very different to what I imagined. “Good, good, Katie, watch that, now, catch him off guard,” he was saying. “That’s it, keep going-”

Zach was on the floor, and Katie struck again, leaning more into the ruthless side of things than I would have expected from her. Zach recoiled angrily, struck by a blow. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? This was supposed to be a friendly bout!”

“There are no friendly bouts in real life, Zach, it’s my job to prepare you or that,” Harry said, like he was J.K. Simmons in Whiplash ramped up to eleven. “You’re going to have to accept that not every spell is going to be aimed at you to sting. It’s going to be aimed at you to kill. You’re lucky that wasn’t a Killing Curse. If it was, you’d be dead. Hell, Katie could have killed you five times already – she just missed a few places where she could have cast a spell. You’re useless.”

“He’s never been this obvious before,” Neville whispered behind me. “This isn’t Harry. This is something else. It’s cruelty. I thought this club was meant to be about optimism. But even Katie’s used darker curses than I would have imagined her being capable of.”

“Well done, Katie! Next up, come on, Ravenclaws have to do better than that,” Harry said, holding her hand up in the air in jubilation to mock cheers. “Come on, give me another Raven. Give me another, yes, I know – let’s see. We have a Thomas Hurst here, don’t we?”

I was slightly alarmed by the fact that he addressed me by name. “We do.”

“Good, good. Don’t worry, it’s nothing personal, most of the Ravenclaws have already duelled today,” said Harry. “This is going to separate you into advanced, medium and beginners training. I’ve put most of the third years or less in beginners. Do better. Katie, take a rest, you’ve earned it. I’m pitting you against Hermione Granger.”

Frak. So much for my plan to avoid getting into a fight against her. What was Harry doing? This would only flair up divisiveness between the group. Hermione’s bushy hair was more prevalent than in the film, her teeth larger. She was taller, too – five foot ten. “And… let’s get ready to rumble!” Harry announced like a wrestling referee. “Go, go, go!”

I fired the first shot, which Hermione countered with ease. The backwards repetition of spellcasting had me surprisingly be capable of holding my own, using spells that I knew from the books more than anything else, but I was distracted, more and more, by Harry – he was watching on from the side carefully, like an observer. He had fallen silent – as if he was making mental notes in his head. And then, I realised what he was doing – why he was getting every student to fight each other. He was working out their moves, their plan of attack, everything that they relied on in battle. If he knew what they were going to throw against them he’d know how to react when exposed, hell, I probably would have done the same thing in his position. 

So, I knew what I had to do, no matter how much my pride would be wounded. I let myself lose. Hermione caught me with a stinging hex as I dropped my guard, and after I recovered, I joined Neville and Michael on the side. Michael was with Ginny so I talked to Neville. He spoke first: “Why’d you lose so quickly?”

I explained what I’d just realised to him and his eyebrows widened. Neville shot a glare over at Harry, who was egging on Ron and Ginny as they fought each other. I watched him like he was feeding off the fight, glowing with excitement and hunger. “We have to underperform. Deliberately.”

“That shouldn’t be hard.”

“Neville, you’re better than you give yourself credit for,” I said. “But, either way, we need to get into this place afterwards again.”

“Why’s that?”

“If I was secretly hiding something, where would I hide it?”  
“In a room that can transform into whatever you want it to,” Neville said. “You’re going to stay behind after.”

“Yeah.”

“What if he discovers you?”

“He won’t,” I said. “But he’s got to be hiding something somewhere, and if the book in Gryffindor Tower was a decoy, it’s here.”

The lesson continued, and by the end, we were all tired. I noticed Harry never fought, he stood from the side-lines, simply watching. The constant observer. “Great job everyone!” Harry said, aloud. “Same time next week?”

There were murmurs of approval and hardly any of dissent. As the students began to file out of the room, I reluctantly followed, but did my best to hang around the corridor until I was sure all the students had gone. Waiting behind, I approached where I’d been let in and walked up and down, thinking, If I were Harry Potter who was not a Harry Potter, what would I be hiding? Where would I be hiding it? Over and over again until a door opened up, and I was let in, to be rewarded with nothingness.

The room itself was dark. There was nothing there. What if that room was Harry’s secrets? What if he had none? Lights, I requested, and the room obeyed. They shot forward like it was descending down a corridor, and eventually, at the end, there was a box with a keyhole, and I had the key in my pocket. Something heavy at least, that had not been there before. I did the only thing I could have done, opened it up, and found some scrambled letters there, ripped out of a page and scattered in the box. Discarded, as if waiting to be put together. I realised, all too late, who had done this trick before, what was coming with the letters, their inevitable re-arraigning and recoiled in horror at what was coming next, what I knew – had to come next. 

And then: the clapping of hands. Slow, and steady, sarcastic and rewarding, that caused me to spin around, looking for a source, looking for anything where they were coming from, to find that the source was right behind me, sporting not just one but two wands in his hand, his – and someone else’s. My worst fears were realised as I recognised the distinctive core of that particular wand and who it belonged to. There was only one person who I knew in the whole of the Harry Potter world that possessed a weapon like that. 

“Bravo, Mr. Hurst. Thank you for walking right into my trap,” said the voice of not Harry Potter, but Lord Voldemort. “Now then, it’s time you told me who you are.”


	5. The Face of the Enemy

**I.**

THE HARRY POTTER WHO was not Harry Potter stood across the room from the Tommy Hurst who was not Tommy Hurst. He displayed complete authority – blocking the only door in or out. He was better than me in a fight even if he was just the normal Harry Potter, let alone whoever it was that possessing him. I was ninety-nine per cent sure at this point the possessor was Lord Voldemort himself, which begged the question – how? And when? The why? Was obvious. He was already starting to subvert Gryffindors' expectations, turn them away from the ideals of their house. Going after the kids was an idea that Tom Riddle had tried to use before and had failed. Taking advantage of The Boy Who Lived represented a golden opportunity to set things right. "I'm assuming you've figured it out by now, so it's only fair that you tell me who you are. Really."

"Figured what out?" I played dumb.

"Do I really have to spell it out for you? You're a Ravenclaw, you should know that playing dumb isn't going to work on me," said Harry. "But, if we must play this game, I did set up this little trap for you after all. I do like using letters."

The letters spun around my head and organised themselves, burning in fire, next to Harry. They read four simple words, that he'd used before, that confirmed my fears. I Am Lord Voldemort. "Ironic, isn't it? I used them before. On young Potter then. I should have known not to use a memory. It had to be the real me."

"Riddle."

"So you know my name," said Voldemort. "Curious. Tell me more about who you really are, Hurst. I'm going to kill you of course, one way or another, so please, do. How do you muggles put it? We can do it the easy way… or the hard way."

I used a wand to create a smoke-screen, but Riddle was smarter – he used a force-choke like ability, combined with a force-pull equivalent to put on his best Vader impression and pull me towards him with his wand. I tried to resist but I was choking, gasping for air, the smoke that I had conjured wasn't helping. He disarmed me within seconds and with skill, cast a spell on my wand.

It snapped in half, clean in two, before my very eyes, and I saw the last hope that I had filter out completely. "Did you think you could run from me? That a simple smoke-screen would fool me? Please. I expected more."

"A question for a question, then," I said.

"You are in no positions to make bargains," Voldemort snapped at me. "But fine. I will entertain you. Who are you?"

"Scott…" I wheezed through the force-choke, grasping for air. "Scott Walker."

He let me go, and I gasped for air. "Impressive. That is even more a muggle name than the one you currently have."

"You admit it, then. You admit that you're halfblooded. That you have a muggle name-"

"I do not allow people to bastardise my name and get away with it," said Tom Riddle. "You, on the other hand… Tommy? What kind of atrocity is that? Have you no self-respect?"

"That's three questions right there, and I haven't had any yet," I said. "A question… why? Why go through all this trouble?"

"Because this allows me to do two things," said Riddle. "I realised a long time ago that the best way to parents' hearts was through their children. If I control their children, turn them against their parents, then they will fall in line to protect them. I tried becoming a Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher before, you know. It didn't work."

"And you think impersonating Harry will?"

"A question for a question," reminded Riddle. "How much do you know about what… is happening here?"

"Enough," I said, and didn't give Voldemort anymore. "Now. Now, one more time, for the record, who are you and whose body are you occupying?"

He looked confused, but said it anyway, "You are wasting precious little time that you could have to ask all the wrong questions, but if we must play this game of my own creation, I am Lord Voldemort and I am occupying Harry Potter's body!"

And that, was when I made my move. Unbreakable glass slid up between me and Voldemort, separating the two of us. An invention of the room – I watched it materialise into place before he could react. "And I was just waiting for this to finish charging. Thank you very much. I'm sure it will hold up well when presented to Dumbledore, maybe it'll even convince Umbridge. Hah! I played you, oh my god, I can't believe I just tricked freaking Voldemort."

"What do you mean?" Voldemort looked confused. "You think you are safe behind those walls? I can tear them down here as much as anywhere."

"No you can't. See, you may have visited the room before the lesson to prepare, but I went first," I said. "I had to lure you out into the open to admit your plan and taking the bait was the only way. If you were Voldemort, and if you really were, you'd use the Room of Requirement as a base of operations. All I had to do next was get a confession that would convince the right people, and thank you Fred and George Weasley. Muggle recording devices, designed for pranks but retrofitted into something useful, you my friend have just been the victim of some high tech, 90s wiretapping."

I played the tape back to him. " _I am Lord Voldemort, and I am occupying Harry Potter's body_."

"I love this part," I said.

Voldemort wasn't just mad, he was pissed, and tried to have the walls removed with as much brute force as he could manage. Yet the walls were a creation of the room, a pre-planned structure that I had set-up. Sorry – I couldn't tell you everything that I was doing at Hogwarts this year, for obvious reasons. I had to keep in the dark some things. Forgive me. He tried to use both his wands, even cast forbidden curses at the unbreakable glass, but no matter how much The Dark Lord tried, the power of the room was stronger. All I had to do was play a waiting game now, but unfortunately, he realised that too, seconds before I did, and started laughing, coldly and without emotion.

"You have failed to realise what is so blindingly obvious," Tom Riddle said. "The Room of Requirement is not just beholden to one master; it is beholden to all who wish to use its purpose. It will not just obey you, but also, me. I assume you have told the Room that the glass cannot be shrunken by Harry Potter? Or Tom Riddle, perhaps, to have both bases covered? Clever. For A Ravenclaw, I would expect nothing less. But what you fail to understand, Hurst… or do you prefer being called Walker? No matter. You are in Hurst's body, so I shall call you by his name, is that if I wanted to do anything else to the room, all I have to do… is think. A foreign concept to you, it seems."

I realised what he had planned and my cocky overconfidence faded in a matter of microseconds, turning into pure horror when I realised what he was about to attempt. The room around me, only my side of the room, was beginning to shrink, trapped within the glass. "You will break down the glass," said Voldemort. "You will return the recording to me. And then I will kill you. Students get lost in Hogwarts all the time; one more will not be any different? After all, it is not the first time someone has died at my hands in these walls."

Moaning Myrtle. The Chamber of Secrets. Yikes. Was that what I was going to become, a ghost? Was that what would happen to all people who died on Hogwarts' grounds, doomed to watch over its walls for eternity? "Let me out. Please," I commented, growing desperate. "Please let me go."

"It's your choice. Not mine. You said it yourself. These walls are unbreakable," said Voldemort, watching on. "I could even be crueller. You prefer to torture me by muggle methods, so I will use them too. Let's fill the room up with… I don't know, poisonous gas. You will be tearing apart your own throat within minutes."

Gas began to fill the room as it shrunk. Voldemort was gloating now, showcasing just how out of my depth I truly was. He was in victory mode. He was getting bigger and better. There was no way out. Almost no way out. Until I realised something. "You see, from one Tom to another, you've overlooked something."

"What's that?" Voldemort's eyebrows raised. "Go on. Enlighten me. You do not have much time left before the gas spreads. I wonder, what will happen first. Will you choke to death? Or will you be crushed?"

"Neither," I said. "Because, Tommy McTomothy, you've overlooked something so simple, it's almost pathetic. For a Dark Lord, I expected more. All I had to do was keep you talking so you wouldn't notice."

"Notice what?"

"The massive hole in the ground," I said, and pointed next to me at the, well, there was no other way to describe it but that – a massive hole in the ground, which had silently transformed next to me, creating a bottomless slide into a pit below. The Chamber of Secrets comparisons were evident. The gas around me vanished suddenly, replaced by Voldemort's fury.

"Very well," he said. "If you cannot choke to death, assuming that hole does even lead somewhere at all, you will drown!"

"Well, it looks like we're done here," I said, as the heavens opened. "Thanks for entertaining me, but I really have to get to Dumbledore. In theory, that's where this hole should lead. Dumbledore's Office. I asked for Dumbledore, so there's where it shall go. But before I leave, I just wanted to say one more thing."

"What was that?"

" _BYE!_ " I couldn't resist the temptation to offer up one more gloat. I jumped, and was followed by an endless cascade of water, hoping that the slide would take me to Dumbledore's Office before Riddle got there.

**II.**

The water must have overtaken me at some point because the next thing I knew I was coughing, soaking wet, recovering from a bout of unconsciousness inside something that was decidedly not the office of Albus Dumbledore, but the interior of a pub's cellar. Smashed glasses were everywhere, and the water was being magicked away by someone who was decidedly not, Albus Dumbledore. What happened to the Room of Requirement always meeting people's requirements? "Who are you?" I said, climbing up, still hazy.

"You're not the one asking questions here, boy, I am, who the hell are you and what have you done to my pub?" The man said, repairing the damaged bottles in the cellar around him, but more annoyed at the inconvenience than anything else.

"Sorry. It wasn't me, it was Voldemort," I apologised hastily, a little too quickly.

"That's what all the kids say."

"Yes, but it actually was Voldemort," I said. "He's possessed Harry Potter! He trapped me in the Room of Requirement and tried to kill me. I only escaped because I wanted to meet with Dumbledore… and you're not Professor Dumbledore."

"No, but I am a Dumbledore," said Aberforth, and I realised where I'd got my calculations wrong, I hadn't been specific about which Dumbledore that I wanted the Room to take me to. "And think very carefully about what you say next, boy, because that is some serious accusations you are making there."

"It's true. Every word, I swear, you got to believe me," I said, reaching into my pocket and pulling out my recording device, only to see that it was decidedly in worse condition before than it was. It was destroyed, and I had no wand to repair it with. "Would you mind?"

"Not at all. Reparo," said Aberforth, but nothing happened. It just stayed exactly the same as it was before. "That must be tough luck, boy. Looks like it's been cursed. Please don't tell me it's your only proof, short of getting Voldemort himself to confess AGAIN?"

I shot a dark look at him. That was my get out clause. My whole plan just evaporated like that. Frak. "Um, kind of."

"You're an idiot. Presumably, you confronted Voldemort head on without thinking?"

"Um, kind of," I said again. Aberforth slapped me, and I recoiled. "What was that for?"

"First rule of confronting Voldemort head on," he said, "Is that you always think. Did you not listen to the warnings? The Bogeyman's Bogeyman. He's scarier than you idiot muggleborns could ever possibly imagine, he's always two steps ahead, every single time. Whatever you do next, he's already thought out a plan to stop it, and three backup plans in case the first one doesn't work. And you thought confronting him alone would work? Especially when… boy, please don't say you didn't play this recorder back to him and tell him all your plans?"

"Ah. I see your point. I may have done that."

Aberforth slapped me again. "You idiot. Now he knows what you're going to do, what your moves are. Good luck trying that trick again on him as he won't be fooled twice. And he knows now who you are, which means, he's going to try and stop you from telling Dumbledore or anyone who would listen who he really is. That is all assuming, you're not lying. Prove to me you're not lying."

"He's been acting differently," I said. "Cruel, even. The Harry Potter I know would never get kids to re-enact a stealth Fight Club remake to find out their strengths and weaknesses. He's more of a Remember the Titans kinda guy. Or, I don't know, Angels in the Outfield-"

"Harry Potter has a mean streak. So what?" he ignored my pop culture references and kept the pressure on.

"He's manipulative."

"Manipulation is pretty much a requirement to be sorted into Slytherin. You're going to do better than that."

"He isn't standing up to the Ministry of Magic when he should be."

"Why should he be? He's a child, not a martyr," said Aberforth. "Standing up to the Ministry gets you killed. Don't take it personally kid, I'm not saying you're not right, but this is just what the defence is going to throw at you. My brother may be suspicious, but he's not likely to throw his Golden Boy under the metaphorical bus anytime soon based on a hunch."

"It's not a hunch. His friends don't think he's Harry Potter anymore," I said, growing desperate. Okay – maybe that was a bit too desperate, it was only Neville who I'd managed to half-convince. But it was my last chance, my last and only ace in the hole.

Aberforth stepped back a minute, and stopped. "That might have just saved you. If you can get confessions from Potter's best friends, before he gets to them completely? Then you might have a case. It's the slimmest of slim cases, but assuming you can convince Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley – where everyone who knows anyone knows that they are friends of Harry Potter, that Harry Potter is not Harry Potter anymore? It's not over yet."

"Thank you," I breathed a sigh of relief.

"I never said it was going to be easy. But if you're right," Aberforth said. "Then we're all in very big trouble. I need a drink. Go. Get out of my pub. You'll have to walk through the forest, all the buildings here are closed at this time of night so the secret pathways are a no-go."

"Thanks," I said. I knew Aberforth had a way back to the Room of Requirement thanks to the portal but that wasn't opened until the seventh book and I didn't want to risk going back in case Voldemort was still waiting for me. So that meant a lovely run through the forest lay ahead of me.

It was pitch black when I left, the early hours of the following morning (my confrontation with Voldemort had happened at around seven pm, and I was starving hungry, by this point), with only lamp-posts illuminating Hogsmeade. I followed the road, heading towards the Station where I could get to the school through the gate from there and maybe even take one of the thestral carriages if I was lucky, but I didn't get far before I saw movement up ahead, through the fog. Two Aurors had just appeared out of nowhere in front of me, and I realised what they were looking for with growing horror, and that I was almost certainly too late. They confirmed my worst fears seconds later. "Let's spread out. Hurst has to be here somewhere. Remember, he's worth more if we bring him in alive, I have some debts I need to pay…."

I backed up and turned the corner, desperate to get out of there, ran down an alleyway, through the fog, which seemed to be getting thicker and thicker at every turn, and found myself faced to face with a hastily assembled _WANTED_ poster, a picture of my face, the name _THOMAS HURST_ scrawled underneath me, moving, looking younger and innocent, a face that I barely even recognised, having precious little occasions to look at it in the mirror. _DEAD OR ALIVE_ was labelled in the subheadings, and scrawled underneath my picture was the cause that saw my eyes widen. _ON TWO ACCOUNTS: 1. FOR TREASON AGAINST THE MINISTRY OF MAGIC, and 2. FOR THE ATTEMPTED MURDER OF THE BOY WHO LIVED!_

I was so screwed. Riddle had got to the Ministry first, maybe even Dumbledore, and wrapped every single one of them under his thumb in a way that The Dark Lord only knew how. My situation had just gone from bad, with a capital B, to so, so much worse.

TO BE CONTINUED…


	6. Wanted: Dead or Alive

**I.**

I WAS AT a complete loss. A tailspin. I'd failed so spectacularly; it went from zero to a hundred almost overnight. Up until yesterday evening I'd been a normal student of Hogwarts, and now, I was public enemy number one. I should have expected Riddle to do something like this, It was instantly scarring, and the feel of being a fugitive probably had wrecked Tommy Hurst's life to the point of no return: what would his parents say if they found out? They presumably would be the first place where the Aurors would go. And oh my god, his sister was an Auror, what was her name, Allie? Christmas Dinner would be so awkward this year. I told myself to calm down, to not panic, and eventually come up with a solution about getting back to Dumbledore, Professor Dumbledore – and convincing him the truth about Harry Potter.

I looked in my pocket to see what gadgets I still had raided from Fred and George Weasley's magical wonder emporium, and came up short. My wand had already been snapped, I didn't even have that – so whatever I was going to have to do, I was going to have to do the old-fashioned way. I was now starting to not regret the hours that I'd put in on the football field during midweek at school, even if it had meant my social life had taken a dip outside of the players who attended the training session with me. "I am so screwed," I said to nobody in particular. I kept myself low as I made my way through the narrow fences that supported the exterior around Hogsmeade, the guards were patrolling everywhere. This reminded me of a level in a video game, where the patrols were marching forward, inspecting every alley and knocking on every door. I had an idea, a crazy idea – The Shrieking Shack.

There was a path in there to the Whomping Willow. Getting there was easy, finding the path? More difficult. I didn't have the Marauder's Map. Wait, what if Harry did? It would explain an awful lot. But then, he would have already known about my name. So did he not have it yet? A mystery. A true, honest to god, mystery. In all likelihood, he knew it existed, and it was only a matter of time before he cracked the code.

The main obstacle that I had to overcome was making the leap from the edge of the village to the woodland that surrounded the Shack itself, across the open plane. It looked down on us from above and once I was out of the fog I could see it though the gaps, haunting and eerie, but there was no time like the present to explore a haunted house. There were two Aurors, they always seemed to travel back and forth, in pairs, and one of them had an accent that sounded like Tommy's, and she was being asked questions. "This must be a conflict of interest for you, surely?"

"The Minister pulled me aside and said that it would be the best way to prove my loyalty," said Allie, and I took a look at my sister for the first time: her hair was red, and she wore the standard Auror costume. She looked in her early 20s, and I wondered how long it took people to become an Auror. "I'm still trying to wrap my head around it though, Tommy. Of all people. Freaking Tommy. He played with model trains when he was younger. What could have happened to him at Hogwarts? Was I not looking out for him enough?"

"Maybe he's being framed."

"What, by Harry Potter?" Allie said. "I don't know what's worse. My brother's not who he says he is, or the Boy Who Lived. But the Ministry, they just, wouldn't lie about something like that, you know?"

"You're right," said the Auror. "Do your parents know?"

"I haven't told them yet. They know he can't have gotten back to the house yet."

"What if he does?"

I couldn't listen to it anymore. I'm so sorry, Tommy, I said. I really wished I had done better. Just because it wasn't my family didn't mean that I cared. I wasn't going to become the monster that the Ministry, and apparently, my own sister, thought I was. I'd forgotten how easily Hogwarts turned against people, and how that expanded across the rest of the Potterverse, into the ranks of the Aurors themselves. No wonder it was so easy for Voldemort to take over. I had to stop that from happening, somehow, with no wand, no friends, no plan. It was madness. I waited until they knocked on a door of someone's home and made a sprint for it, as quietly as I could, making it to the end of the plain before I heard a voice shout out from behind me: "He's right there! Stop him!"

One of the Hogsmeade house owners had decided to snitch on me and catch me mid-jump into the woods, meaning that now I had to flee two armed Aurors and it was only a matter of seconds before the whole gang showed up. Frak, frak, frakkity frak frak. Thankfully the woods were thick enough in this area to avoid direct spells, meaning the Aurors had to get as close as possible. I made my way through the trees, not stopping to avoid getting cut on branches, running at breakneck pace. I could do this. An Auror apparated in front of me a few yards forcing me to duck his spells, I turned around a tree and there was another one waiting for me. They were spreading out, trying to encircle me, so without thinking, I lashed out at one and punched him. He recoiled instantly, and I realised that these Aurors didn't get involved in fights with their hands when they were younger, didn't even have professional hand-to-hand combat training. Without their wands, they were useless. You could tell that some of them barely did any physical exercise at all. Allie was the only one I had to really worry about in that department, but she was nowhere in sight just yet. The Aurors were clumsy and that played to my advantage, the man recoiled, struck, and I was away again, racing up the hill towards the Shack.

It didn't take me long to reach it, ducking through a hole in the fence whilst the Aurors were still playing catchup. I hid behind the wall as the three Aurors came out of nowhere to a halt right in front of the building. "Where'd he go?"

"He can't have gone in the shack," said Allie. "Everyone knows what happens to people in there…"

"We're Aurors, Hurst, it's our job to snuff him out. Besides, you heard the rumours about Lupin two years ago," said the Auror. "There weren't ghosts in there. It was him. The werewolf."

"Okay," said Allie, mustering up her courage. "Let's do this. Let's find him."

They were unaware that I was hiding right next to them, carefully eavesdropping on every word I said. "Spread out, and when you're in the corners of the house, cast the tracking spell," said the other Auror, whose name I didn't know. "We need to have all corners of the house covered."

I remembered what I was looking for, a small room. In the years since Lupin's departure from Hogwarts the building had become even more rundown than it was prior, the formerly boarded up windows were no longer boarded up and I had to be careful about where I stepped on the wooden floors. They were rank, and I winced as rats crawled past my feet. I turned the corner and made my way to the lowest point of the house, the basement, where I found an empty cage that once belonged to a werewolf. The doors were open, and there were no ghosts here anymore. The wizarding world had a long way to go in terms of inclusiveness, that was for certain, but me getting back to Hogwarts was, for lack of a better word: the main priority for now. Changing the world could come later.

"I'm almost there!" Allie shouted in the Auror's direction. He responded with the affirmative saying that he was already there, and I realised when he meant opposite ends of the house, they meant top to bottom. He was in the basement with me.

I moved inside a broom closet as quietly as I could, and backed away from him. I hit a rock, and fell backward as the Auror shouted "Homenum Revelio!" and the words came out like aplomb. Something swooped low over my head, and I realised that I had been discovered. Frak. But why hadn't I hit something behind me? This should have been a broom closet. I climbed up from the floor, and realised that somebody had moved the broom closet on a trap door, and the 'trap' part was no longer there, it was just a hole in the floor. I'd been seeing a lot of those lately, but if there was a way out of Hogwarts there had to be a way back in.

"He's still here, he must have found the trap door!" the Auror called out but by that point I had barely heard him, I was running down the corridor as fast as my legs could carry me. Runrunrunrun. I was still pretty tired, I didn't remember much of my sleep last night, but obviously I didn't get much. I was running on empty. I reached the end of the pathway after what felt like an age: the footsteps of the other Aurors running heavy behind me, and I could hear Allie's cries.

"Tommy! Tommy come, back! We can talk this out!"

I wanted to go to her, I really did, but I had to get to Dumbledore, Albus Dumbledore, he was the only one who would listen. He had to. If I ended up in the Ministry's hands, they would take me back to Azkaban before I could convince the Headmaster. I had to get Neville, I had to get Ron and Hermione, I had to convince two of the Boy Who Lived's best friends that he was an impostor. It wasn't going to be easy. Impossible even. But it was the only hope that I had.

I climbed up out of the tunnel and reached the tree at the end. I took a moment to stand still, lean against it, exhausted and relived, that I'd finally made it above ground. And then I was brutally reminded about what kind of tree it really was. It wasn't just any tree – it was the Whomping Willow. It threw me, violently, into the air. I landed several feet away, bruised but with no bones broken, in Hagrid's front yard. Realising that the giant wasn't home at the time, I made my way up and away from the tree whilst Allie and the Auror did their best to navigate it out without coming out the same way I did. Being thrown by a tree is a painful experience, and I realised that my nose was bleeding as blood dropped down on my hands. My jacket was ripped and torn; my trousers considerably worse for wear. I looked like a wreck, there was mud everywhere. But that was not important right now. I tucked away my pride and continued to run, reaching the Herbology classroom and forced my way inside, breaking glass.

The greenhouse was quiet, which was a relief – I found my way into the main corridors with little in the way of ease. I felt myself being watched at every turn by the portraits as I passed them and realised that the Great Halls of Hogwarts were no longer welcome to me, they turned their gaze at every turn, and some even spat at me, or did their best to. A few vanished, and I had an inkling as to where they were going – to report to the Ministry of Magic, or Dumbledore himself.

It turned out that the Aurors were in Hogwarts too, I heard voices up ahead. "Target sighted somewhere on the fourth-floor corridor. Does he think he's mad? Going back to Hogwarts like that? He must know we have the place on lockdown."

"He's probably coming to finish the job, we have detail on Harry Potter, don't worry," said another Auror, and I recognised the voice of Kingsley Shacklebolt, which meant that the other voice, was Nymphadora Tonks. They had two of the best Aurors in the business, two of the good ones, after me. I was wondering how I was going to get past them when I saw somebody walking down the corridor, from Herbology no less, who I had missed, and was so wrapped up in her own thoughts that she didn't even notice until she looked me right in the eye: Cho Chang. I covered her mouth before she could scream.

"I'm sorry," I whispered into her ear, removing her wand from her pocket and pointing it at her head. "I need to get Dumbledore; I don't mean you any harm. Truly. Just help me get past the Aurors, I can explain everything, I'm so sorry-"

Cho didn't react, she was terrified, and as we passed a Knight in Shining Armour on the wall, I saw in its reflection how I must look, scared and broken. Desperate. Now I know what Sirius had felt. Now I knew what he would do. The Aurors heard me, and spun around the corner. Shacklebolt looked me right in the eye, his wand trained, "Don't do anything stupid, kid. Put the wand down."

"I need to see Professor Dumbledore," I said, pressing my wand against Cho's temple and she squirmed. I wasn't sure whether my words were trying to convince her or myself more, I sounded half hearted when I said them and they could tell that, but were reluctant to fire. "I'll use it, I will!"

"Harry Potter wasn't enough for you mad bastard you're going to take out the Headmaster as well?" Tonks said. She tried to cast a spell, but Shacklebolt stopped her.

"No," said the Auror. "Let him pass. We know where he's going."

"What if he harms the girl?"

"He needs her to get to Dumbledore," observed the Auror. "We just have to get there first. Come on."

Shit. I turned the corner and kept Cho in control, leading up to a passageway ahead of me, when she finally broke free of my restrains that was holding her mouth. "You're an idiot, you know that, right? You get to Dumbledore, he'll kill you."

"No he won't, not when he hears what I have to say," I said, although I was half convincing myself. "Trust me. Please. Neville Longbottom does. Michael Corner does. I'm innocent. I'm trying to help."

Cho laughed. "You call this trying to help?"

We kept going up the stairs, two students were waiting for us but I, finally in possession of a wand, and them knowing that I was dangerous enough to attack Harry Potter, backed down – they were only eleven, after all. The tension was paramount, I was sweating, Cho was a nervous wreck, she'd only lost Cedric the year before and I felt sorry for her. I really didn't want to do this, but I saw no other choice.

"Shame on you!" a portrait called out at me as I made my way around the corridor. "Shame! You bring disgrace to the honour of Rowena Ravenclaw!"

"Traitor," another called. "Traitorous scum. Whoreson knows no better than what you are. You're nothing. You'll die nothing. Let the girl go, at least," the painting said. The vitriol aimed at me was so vile I felt like crying, I hadn't been bullied this bad even at school. I felt like hexing the lot of them.

Cho eventually spoke up for herself as we passed a corridor. "Hey, we've passed that one already. Do you even know where you're going?"

"Wait… No," I said, honestly, realising the flaw in my plan. I hadn't been to Dumbledore's Office and in all the chaos, I'd forgotten where it was.

Cho did her best to imitate a facepalm. "At this rate it'll be morning soon and class will open. We might as well get this over with if you're going to go to Dumbledore's office. That portrait up there? That's a pathway to his floor."

"Won't there be Aurors waiting on the other side?"

"Hey, you have me. If I'm going to be your bait, I might as well do it properly."

"I really didn't want this to happen. I'm sorry. I'm innocent, I swear."

"That's what they all say," Cho said, as we climbed in. "But you're a Ravenclaw. I should allow you some benefit of the doubt. Tell me what's got you so worked up you decide to go and invade the most fortified place in the country right now."

"Really? It's the most fortified place in the country?"

"Yeah, you idiot. The Dementors are coming, too. They'll be here within the hour."

I shuddered. "Seriously?"

"Seriously. Treason and trying to kill Harry Potter? Fudge believes you should be sent straight to Azkaban. Without trial."

"Wait, how did I commit treason?"

"Apparently you're the one who came up with the idea behind the Anti-Ministry League."

"The Anti-Ministry what?"

"You really don't know what it is?"

"No. I mean, I was at the defence club, but that was Harry's idea."

"Apparently it wasn't. He says he overheard a Ravenclaw talk about starting a club and the Ravenclaw influenced him into setting it up," said Cho.

"And the Ministry buy it?"

"He's been cozying up them lately," said Cho. "They buy anything that makes them look good. Working with Dumbledore's Golden Boy is a real get for them. There are even rumours that he's going to denounce You-Know-Who's Return."

"What about everyone in Gryffindor? Why not come forward?"

"I don't know."

"Maybe they're scared," I said, realising something. "Harry was mental in that club."

"Is that why you wanted him dead? Because you lost to Hermione Granger?"

"I didn't want him dead. I don't want him dead," I said. "I'm trying to save him."

"By trying to kill him?"

"He's not Harry Potter," I said, pleadingly. "Please believe me. I don't think Harry Potter came back from the tournament last year."

Cho stopped, and looked at me. "Be very careful about what you're going to say next. House loyalty will only get you so far."

"I think he confronted Voldemort," I said, not caring about the name anymore. "I think he did, but I think he… I think he lost. Voldemort impersonated Harry's body."

"Why?"

"He said it himself. He wants to try and turn the students into puppets for his army."

"That's horrible. But that does explain why Harry's been acting so different lately," Cho said. "But why should I believe you?"

"Because," I said. "I've got nothing to lose. My wand is already snapped. Hogwarts hates me. Why would I risk coming back?"

"To finish the job."

"Without a wand?"

"You have one now."

"Here," I said, and handed it back to Cho, who looked at me bemused. "Now why would I do that?"

"Because you're crazy."

"Because I'm right. Please. Trust me," I said. "You could stun me and take me to Dumbledore or the Aurors yourself. If the Dementors are here…"

I noticed, sticking out of the nooks and crannies of the pathways, were small spots of growing green. The green instantly froze, and I wondered whether Dumbledore this time had authority to block Dementors from entering the school that had once been a safe haven from them. The Ministry didn't do things by halves. "Then you're already out of time," said Cho, and handed me her wand back. "I think you're going to need this more than I will."

"Thank you," I said, as we approached the exit. "Are you ready?"

"Ready as I'll ever be," Cho said. "Let's get this over with."

We pushed the door open together, and were instantly met with dozens of wands. Cho was smart enough to go first, putting her hands up in the air like she was playing along, "He's dangerous!" she said to them, putting it on. "Don't shoot."

"You're not helping," I whispered to her. The Aurors, Allie among them, Professor Umbridge leading the pack, were all gathered in the area. I noticed Allie's disapproving, pleading look of hurt and betrayal, as I met eye contact with Tommy's sister for the first time. I could see the family resemblance clearly. "Okay… here's the deal, Aurors. I will only talk to Dumbledore."

"You're out of options, traitor," said one of them. "Surrender the wand and let the girl go. Then we'll consider calling off the Dementors."

"Nobody will use the Dementors on Hogwarts grounds against one of my students," said a calming voice, and I felt the growing sense of despair that I was having leave, replaced by calm and confidence as the entrance to Dumbledore's Office, at the end of the room, behind the Aurors, opened, replaced by Albus Dumbledore himself, clad in all his majestic glory. "I will have them banished from the grounds of Hogwarts School at once. How dare you defy my authority on this matter, my stance has remained unchanged ever since I was Headmaster of this school. I expected better from you, Dolores."

"This is a wanted criminal," Umbridge said. "Who just tried to kill The Boy Who Lived and has openly admitted to declaring war against the Ministry of Magic! Executive actions must be taken."

"My Office must remain a sanctuary for students," Dumbledore said. "No matter what they said they may have done or did."

"You would harbour traitors? And would-be murderers?"

"I will at least grant him the respect of hearing him out," said Dumbledore. "Providing he lets Miss Chang go. We have had quite the trouble for one day, Mr. Hurst."

Yes. This was it! This was my way forward! Thank you, Professor Dumbledore. The man, the myth, the legend, was more than living up to his name. He held out his hand, a twinkle in his eye. "Come with me, Tommy. It seems you and I have some talking to do."

I let Cho go, and she ran away from me.

And that was the last thing I saw before I heard the word _"STUPEFY!"_ cast over and over again at me, flashing red light in my direction, with even Dumbledore hopeless to stop such a magnitude of wand-casting by the Aurors. I noticed however, in the sea of spells, there were only two people not casting them apart from the Headmaster: Cho and Allie. But it wasn't enough to stop me from blacking out completely, rendering me unconscious.


	7. The 3:10 to Nottingham

**I.**

I CAME TO in a moving carriage. The train I was on was accelerating at a rapid speed, and I was pretty sure I was not alone – there were two Aurors present. I could see, through them, a radio, and I heard a familiar voice filter back to me. _“Uncle Mark’s here, Scottie. Look, it’s Uncle Mark. When was the last time you saw him?”_

_“Hi kid, I’m back again. You know me,” Mark said. “Hey. When we get better we’ll go to a football game again. One nil to the Arsenal, and all that, huh? I hear we’re doing quite good this season. Sorry, it’s been a while-"_

“Since the Boy Who Lived has survived his assassination attempt, he would like to make it clear that he is perfectly safe and unharmed in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry,” announced one of the speakers on the radio, and I realised what Voldemort was doing. “At his press release, he thanked the Ministry for their hard work in apprehending the target, Tommy Hurst, a muggleborn fifth year student. Questions will be raised going forward about whether Hogwarts has been too lenient on bringing muggleborns to the school without background checks on their family, but it is important to not overlook the role that Hurst’s sister, Allie, played in bringing him in, putting Ministry loyalty above family as an excellent example of everything that the Ministry is looking for in a true Auror. As promised, it was the first of two announcements by Harry Potter today, we go live now to the Ministry of Magic…”

I watched helpless, unable to do anything. The guards were too busy to notice I was awake, neither of them was Allie, I noticed, and neither of them were likely Order of the Phoenix members. The radio presenter was full of talk, and eventually, Harry was allowed to speak. “It is on this momentous day that a new era in our history be formed,” he said. “He Who Must Not Be Named is well and truly gone. I was naïve in announcing his return, but at the time, I was under the influence of the traitor Peter Pettigrew. It was he, not He Who Must Not Be Named, who took Cedric Diggory from us, and it was he, who must be found at all costs. Not The Dark Lord. The Dark Lord is dead. Having come to my senses, I have called a press conference, after months of consideration, and believe that the time is right to make a full statement known: I pledge my full support behind Cornelius Fudge and the Ministry of Magic.”

Whispers from the Aurors of surprise, as the not!Harry continued. “By pledging my full support behind Cornelius Fudge, having survived the attempt on my life unscathed and unarmed, I will be working with the Minister to introduce sweeping new reforms that will make our schools safer. That will make our people safer. We have allowed someone who we thought we could trust to infiltrate our schools. To use our trust against us. We cannot let that happen again. That is why, in co-ordinance with the Ministry, on behalf of Minister Fudge, I propose a new Muggle Protection Act-”

“Turn that off,” said one of the Aurors. “We don’t want the boss catching us listening to it on work duty.”

“Yessir,” said the other, and switched it off. “Hey, look. The traitor’s awake.”

They turned around to face me. “Like what you hear, kid? This is all because of you,” said the lead Auror. “You should be proud of what you’ve done to your race.”

“We’re not a race,” I said. “Muggleborns. You know. There are more of us than there are of you. You should be worried.”

“No I shouldn’t,” said the Auror. “What are you going to do? Punch me? I can throw you about with a flick of my wrist.”

“Not the only thing you can throw about with the flick of your wrist,” I said, admittedly not the best retort, and the Auror lashed out at me and threw me across the room. He laughed as I drew blood.

“Scum,” he said. “The lot of you.”

“I’m going to tear your whole system down,” I vowed. “You, the Ministry, all of it. It’s going.”

“What can you expect to do?” The Auror said. “You’re just one muggleborn. You have no wand. No friends. No plan.”

“Yet I’m the one locked in a cage,” I said. “And I’m not scared of you.”

And that was when the train doors blew out, creating a loud explosion. They took the cage doors with them on the left side, leaving me with a complete, easy get-out. A man on a broomstick was waiting for me, and to my relief, it was Aberforth Dumbledore. “Come with me if you want to live,” he said, and I wondered, just maybe, if he’d seen the Terminator films. I knew it was the 90s, they would be even more popular than they were now because they hadn’t had the bad movies yet (maybe I could warn Hollywood to try something different about them?) so they were still very much the in-franchise. “My brother sends his regards. He couldn’t make it in person.”

I had no choice, but leapt onto the broom, and Aberforth soared skyward in the cloud, leaving another makeshift smoke bomb to disorientate the Aurors. “I haven’t had this much fun in years,” he called back to me. “To be honest, I could have rescued you earlier, but I was hoping you’d say something clever.”

“Why did you save me?”

“My brother thinks you may have a point. Come, let us touch down first. It’s getting windy up here.”

“Thank you for rescuing me.”

“You’re welcome.”

**II.**

We sat down in a muggle pub somewhere in Manchester, and it was a Saturday, so there was football on the television and Manchester United were playing Arsenal. I watched on the screen, curious to see how we were doing. It had been a while since I’d paid attention to an Arsenal game. The game had just started. “The Auror’s right you know. You have no wand. No allies. No plan. Taking down the system is a bit of a stretch for a fifteen year old boy.”

“It’s an old system,” I said, knowing it was more than just Harry Potter, I wasn’t concerned about keeping canon straight anymore, I wasn’t just mad, I was pissed at the Ministry, I was angry at the whole goddamn world after witnessing their justice system firsthand. “I mean, half of the purebloods are inbreds at this point and every other family is a supremacist or an ex-terrorist. The muggleborns are unfairly shut out before we even get to the rich-poor divide. Something needs to change before Voldemort only makes things worse.”

“I have an idea,” said Aberforth. “How familiar are you with the muggle legend of Robin Hood?”

“Plenty,” I said. 

“Well obviously we can’t use guns,” said Aberforth. “We can’t get you a new wand, either, no wand store will sell to you or anyone who already has a wand without Ministry approval. As for guns being a no-go, that’s obvious, they’re loud, ugly and heavy. Plus, they don’t work well around magic. All the bullets go flying in different directions. The last time someone tried it, they shot themselves before they shot anybody else…”

“So you’re thinking we go old school?”

“A bow and arrow,” Aberforth said. “Light, nimble. Efficient. Doesn’t need technology to work, ergo, can’t be screwed over by magic.”

“It sounds insane,” I said.

“Insane to just about work. The wizards don’t even expect you to use anything else that isn’t a wand.”

“I’m not trained in anything.”

“I can help you. I used to be proficient in them. There was a time when I was worried, I might get expelled from Hogwarts, so I used alternative means… just in case. Thankfully I never had to use them,” said Aberforth. “So, I can act as your trainer.”

“Aren’t the Ministry looking for me?”

“Yes,” said Aberforth. “But they’ll only look in the magical areas,” said Aberforth. “Small, narrow-sighted. The only way you’ll get caught in the muggle area is if you announce your face to the press. They’ll have trackers, eyes watching them. Sorry to cut any plans you had at being a pop singer short.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, with a humorous tone. “I was leaning more towards punk rock anyway. Underground stuff.”

Dennis Bergkamp scored in the background for Arsenal, opening the scoring. The pub, full of Manchester United fans, was deadly silent. “Where are we going, then?” I asked.

“Well,” said Aberforth after a pause. “I was thinking of leaning fully into the legend. We can’t use my pub anymore. They’ll be after me, too.”

“The legend?”

“Robin Hood started in Sherwood Forest,” Aberforth said. “What do you think about moving there?”

"You do realise we’re in Manchester, right?”

“I’m aware, it was the best I could do on such short notice,” he said. “But Nottingham isn’t far.”

“When do we start?”

“We just did. Come on,” Aberforth said, handing me a one-way train ticket under the name John Smith, as if he couldn’t have gotten any blander. “We travel the muggle way from now on, and we travel alone. Congratulations. You just got promoted to first class.”

I left the pub, following Aberforth, but something in the background on the television caught my eye, flashing from the football ground when it was showing the crowd reaction to Bergkamp scoring. It was a picture of my face. My young, innocent face – and not that of Tommy Hurst’s face, but that of Scott Walker’s. He was with his Uncle Mark, watching the game. But that shouldn’t have been possible, should it? I wasn’t born in 1995. Yet the face, unrecognisably was my own – and I caught it for a split second, but it felt like looking into my own reflection. Full of innocence and happiness, jubilation at Arsenal’s success over one of the biggest teams of the 1990s. Unaware of the horrors that had affected his alternate-dimension counterpart. 

**III.**

When I opened my eyes in Nottingham Station, I realised that I was a Scott Walker posing as Tommy Hurst posing as John Smith. The whole idea seemed absurd. Three separate identities was almost unheard of, but as I looked up and around the train, the more I had an unnerving feeling that I was being watched. Like someone had their eye on me from the beginning. I looked and I saw a man who couldn’t be more out of place if he tried, out of touch of the modern community. He had an eyepatch and a cigar, he looked like if someone had tried to base everything, they knew about modern day life from reading a Charles Dickens book. He looked like he could have been an extra in David Copperfield, even passing as a double for Uriah Heep. It was bad enough so that he was getting looks from the people around me, the normal travellers, who were making their own way. I had been able to change so I was wearing a cheap, charity-shop bought second hand bomber jacket and baggy jeans with a red hoodie underneath, combined with gloves that had holes in them – it was winter after all. Uriah – I decided to call him Uriah for now, for lack of a better name, noticed me leaving the train and decided to follow suit. I reached into my pocket, feeling that something was there, and found some kind of radio earpiece set. Not knowing whether or not they were a thing – I put one in my head. “Ah,” said a voice on the other end of the line. “So, you’re finally awake. I’m already there.”

“Is there any way you couldn’t have taken me with you?”

“The Ministry can trace underage side-along apparition,” said Aberforth on the other end. “It qualifies as magic. And they’ll be aware that you got off the train somewhere around Manchester, so they know what to look for already.”

“That explains it.”

“Explains what?”

“They’re watching the stations,” I said. “I got a tail. Three o’clock.”

Then I ducked into a small shop in the station, realising that someone was walking down steps ahead of me. “And there’s more of them. Aurors, I think. They know I’m here.”

“Bollocks,” Aberforth said. “Where are you?”

“At the North End of the Station.”

“In the WHSmith?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. There are service stairs out the back of that. Take that and then get on the bus. Try and avoid being followed if you can.”

“Okay,” I said, glancing across to the back of the WHSmith where I saw, indeed, at the back, a set of service stairs. Waiting until the solitary employee was distracted by a customer, I made my move quickly across the WHSmith store, as Aurors entered behind, and pushed the door open seconds before the employee noticed. Leaping down the stairs two at a time, I turned the corner and found an Auror waiting there. 

“Stop right there!” the Auror exclaimed, but the force of the momentum was behind me and I leapt at him, using the ground as a launchpad and crashed down the steps sending us both to the floor in a clumsy heap. I staggered away from him and noticed that I’d drawn blood from him when he’d fallen, he’d hit his head somewhere. Recoiling in horror, I ran away as two more Aurors raced down the stairs – one stopped to take care of his fallen friend but the other followed suit, and as I climbed onto the bus, he followed, just forcing himself in much to the bemused passengers. Thankfully there was a door at the other end of the bus, so I wrestled through the crowd of surprised passengers and forced myself off, just as the doors slammed shut, leaving the Auror stranded on the bus as it pulled away.

“Bus is going to be a no go, but I lost my tail,” I said, ducking into a coffee shop and heading out the back exit before the employee could stop me. I took a few more detours just to make sure and doubled back on myself, relieved to learn that I’d lost the Aurors for now. It was an exhilarating moment – my first movie style chase scene – but it was all over too quickly, and I may have done some serious damage to the Auror chasing me. That was a lot of blood, and I wiped some of it off my hands. We’d gone down awkwardly, he’d hit his head, and now I was in serious trouble. 

“Where are you now?”

“Just crossed Glenister Road and am making my way up through Simm Lane,” I said. 

“Okay, okay, slow down kid, I got you,” Aberforth said. “You’re not that far. Take a left at the end and get on the 108. That’ll get you to the edge of the forest. It should avoid the station.”

“On it,” I said, and moved quickly again, heading towards the bus stop. I found myself to be shaking when I nervously handed over some change, and I was still shaking by the time I reached the edge of Sherwood Forest, wondering, over and over again: Is that Auror going to be okay? Did I just cross a line? The Auror may have been chasing me, but that Auror could have had a family. He could have had a life of his own. Hell, I could have just taken one of the good guys out of the game. The thought stayed on my mind as I eventually made it to the woods.

For most of the journey, I followed the public paths into the woods, eventually stumbling across an area that was shielded to non-magical people, I could tell because of the wards – tourists were walking right past an area that they should be swarming over. An abandoned small hut in the middle of the woods? That had tourist trap written all over it. I followed out of curiosity, and found a trap door at the bottom beneath a solitary carpet. At the bottom of a trap door, I found myself inside what looked like a fortress. It was almost certainly bigger on the inside than on the outside, and I was standing in the centre with rooms stretching up to one side and a balcony above me. I turned, looked up at the alleyway, and saw Aberforth Dumbledore waiting for me with a bow and arrow. He fired a shot at me that went wide, startling me, but I could tell that it was the kind of warning shot that people make to let you know that they could have hit you if they tried.

“This used to be an old wartime bunker,” said Aberforth, looking at me from above. “To be honest, that’s why I chose Nottingham, and the mythology helped sell you on it. We used to shelter muggleborns here. There are about ten rooms in this place. Off the record. Not even the Ministry knows about this and any survivors are sworn to secrecy with an unbreakable vow never to disclose the location of this place. It’s the Fortress in the Forest.”

“Catchy.”

“We had dozens of these safe houses around the country but this is the closest one that’s not right under the Ministry’s nose,” Aberforth said. “But enough of that. From now on, you answer to me. You do anything I tell you to. You don’t leave unless I tell you to. You don’t speak unless I tell you to. You don’t stop working until I tell you to. It’s going to be a while before you’re good enough to go after Voldemort again. By the time this is done, you’re going to hate me as much as him. But it’s going to shape you, mould you from boy to man. Going in solo without training was a big mistake. You might as well put a target on your back, and now you don’t even have a wand. I hate using muggle methods, they’re arcane, obsolete even in the muggle world, but it is what it is.”

“It is what it is,” I echoed by way of an apology. “When do we start?”

“We just did.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure if I'm going too left-field with this chapter (it has payoff, and don't worry, Tommy isn't going to become Robin Hood overnight, remember, this isn't a fix-it and actions will have consequences), but if someone attacked another student and then kidnapped another trying to get to the school, the consequences would be pretty extreme and expulsion/Azkaban would almost be a certainty with the Ministry there no matter the age of the character. I was massively influenced by Arthurian legend for Have You Ever Seen the Rain? so wanted to lean more into the Robin Hood legend for Rebel Rebel, and the whole theme about tearing down the system will play a major part in the second half of this fic (treat the previous chapter as a midseason finale if you will) but it won't be without its consequences (I may have watched Knives Out, Parasite, Hustlers and Ready or Not too many times). And Tommy lost his wand, and obviously guns don't work in the magical world – so he had to have something to use, right? Why not go old-school.
> 
> Apologies for the wait on this chapter too, work has been chaotic lately, I hope it doesn't disappoint.


End file.
